


at least it was here

by tallykale



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Community (TV)
Genre: Check Please Big Bang 2016, M/M, Multi, and i am not even remotely sorry, this entire fanfiction was an excuse to write shitty saying 'no sweatsky Wayne Gretzky'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 10:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8442670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tallykale/pseuds/tallykale
Summary: Eric Bittle never really envisioned himself ending up at Greendale Community College. (Most people at Greendale never envisioned themselves ending up there, for that matter.) But he’s here now, so he may as well make the best of a bad hand. He’s got a fresh life in Colorado, he’s probably going to pass French this year, and he never has to think about hockey or home again if he doesn’t want to.
What really comes out of left field is the study group.
(Community crossover/AU where life takes the scenic route and everyone meets at Greendale instead of Samwell. As per Greendale tradition, shenanigans ensue. Runs parallel to season 2 of Community, if you pretend that's set in 2015 and not 2010.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [2016 Check, Please! Big Bang!](http://checkplease-bb.livejournal.com/)
> 
> thanks so much to my collaborator [misskaterinat](http://misskaterinat.tumblr.com) for their [wonderful art](http://misskaterinat.tumblr.com/post/152707535733/bang-this-is-an-illustration-for-tallykales), and thanks to my wonderful friends who helped beta and encourage this monstrosity from a concept to nearly 50k words. special thanks go to the carlenny crew for funding a good 80% of the jokes in this thing, and for bee lending her name to the cause.
> 
> title is from the [community theme song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEGbjR1Y9Qo), which is a total jam.

 

_i. give me your hands, show me the door / i cannot stand to wait anymore_

“Gooooood _morning_ everyone! I’d like to welcome y’all to the best community college in Colorado… but unfortunately, we’re at Greendale, and my mama always taught me not to lie.”

Eric pauses for the mix of despondent sighs and self-conscious laughter that follows the half-joke. The group is small– the tour had been billed as ‘unmissable’ and ‘free’, but at the end of the day there’s only so much motivation for 8 a.m. campus events to be scrounged up in community college students. “So instead, I’ll just welcome you to Greendale Community College! My name is Eric Bittle, official Greendale hospitality representative and unofficial Greendale tour guide– and I brought y’all goodie bags.”

He hefts the box up on his hip and opens it one-handed. This had been a short-notice job, so he’d only had time to bake a single mini pie for each bag, rather than the array of Greendale-themed treats he’d originally planned. _Next time, Eric_ , he thinks, _you’ll be properly prepared. Personalised flavours of pie. Greendale logo cookies._

(On second thought, maybe not that last one.)

“Feel free to examine the contents of these on our tour, but here’s a quick rundown: a Greendale pennant with which to show your– well, not _pride_ , exactly. To show that you go to school. There’s a map of campus, labelled with directions and clarifying notes, because this is a really badly planned school. Lord, once I was trying to find the cafeteria and ended up in the pool slash courthouse, which are apparently the same building– one that I had no idea existed! So to save you from those freshman flubs, I’ve circled areas of confusion, and– well, there’s a few pages of notes attached as well. Oh! Can’t forget my award-winning mini pies! All apple, I’m afraid, since this was a bit of a rush, but if there’s anyone who doesn’t like apple, or– god forbid– _pies_ , then come talk to me after the tour and I’m sure we can work something out.”

He sets the box down on the stairs in front of him, opening one of the bags and holding each item up as he introduces them in his incorrigible Southern ramble. The gift bags themselves are just simple white-on-blue handmade craft paper affairs, and he’d been optimistic and made an even twenty-four of them, which was clearly far too cheerful a prediction; there’s about a dozen people standing in front of him right now. As he watches, one of them grabs a bag out of the box and hurries themselves off without so much as a backward glance. Eric tuts and frowns slightly at their retreating back, but can’t really bring himself to be _too_ upset. College students will be college students, and free food is the same wherever you go.

He focuses his attention back on the group and performs a quick headcount as they shuffle forward to grab gift bags: ten still vaguely interested-looking people are standing in front of him, ranging from about sixteen (high school student in a dual enrolment earning early college credits, looking far more confident than Eric is sure he was at that age) to a hazy fifty-ish (looking for something to do with their life after a messy separation and ‘break’ from their job). Eric finds his gaze drawn to a few particular faces– a short girl with an undercut and sharply winged eyeliner who he thinks he’s seen talking with the Dean a few times before the official start of the year; a tall dark and handsome guy that Eric would identify as a jock if it weren’t for the hunted look in his eyes, and also the salmon shorts he’s wearing; a man with scuffed aviators who sports a luscious moustache and matching hair to below his shoulders, and is wearing about the minimum amount of fabric that could still be classified as a shirt; some absolute mountain of a blond man who has a hoodie pulled up over his expression of annoyed indifference, featuring arms that Eric is both jealous and a little scared of (and who Eric is _so sure he’s seen somewhere, lord, that face is familiar_ ). If asked, Eric probably couldn’t say why he fixates on those four faces for longer than might be normal. It just– when he looks at them, his mind skips for a fraction of a second, like they’re faces he’s grown up with and just forgotten until now; like he knows their names as well as his own; like they’ve been waiting for him to get there and one of them is going to say, smiling, “Let’s go, then.”

He blinks, hard, and shakes his head. It doesn’t do to dwell on people he might have known in another life.

“So!” he says, clapping his hands when everyone is clutching a gift bag (and some are already devouring the mini pies; Eric mourns silently for the brutal and undignified death of his baking). “We are currently standing on the steps to the library, which is as good a place to start as any.” He waves a hand up towards the building behind him, which is surprisingly well-built as Greendale buildings go. “Inside you will find not only knowledge, but also a comfortable place to study, sleep, and build friendships that will stand the test of time. The librarians are absolutely _lovely_ , and if you ever need a helping hand, just ask them or one of the student volunteers.”

So, _okay_ , he rehearsed the speech. He just wants this to go well. Is that so much to ask?

The guy with the moustache (which now has crumbs in it) sticks his hand up in the air. The movement makes his not-shirt lift up so Eric and the rest of the world have a lovely view of his nipples. (Honestly, it’s not like anyone is going to get on his case for being shirtless outside, so what’s the point of wearing a whole five inches of fabric anyway?) “Question,” he says, nudging his sunglasses down his nose so he can look Eric in the eyes. “When you say _sleep_ , do you mean that there’s, like, designated sleeping areas?”

Eric purses his lips. The guy seems serious. “Um,” he says. “There’s some sofas and armchairs, but I meant it in more of a power-nap sense. No beds, if that’s what you’re asking…?”

“Shoot,” says moustache, tapping at his chin in thought. “Damn. Oh, well, I’ll find something. Sorry for interrupting the tour, brah.”

Now that Eric is looking at him properly, he has the figure of someone who used to be well-off and is adjusting as well they can to opportunistic eating. His ribs jut out over the outline of abs that haven’t seen a proper workout routine in a while. For a moment Eric thinks that discouraging illegal squatters is probably somewhere in his job description, but then he firmly shakes the part of his mind that spoke up and thinks about how lucky he himself is, and makes a note to see if there isn’t a spare dorm the Dean can give the guy.

“Not a problem, sir, it’s what I’m here for,” Eric says with a smile. (Moustache looks bewildered at being called sir, but returns the smile anyway.) He’ll pull him aside after the tour and ask if there’s anything he can do to help. Send him along with an extra pie, maybe.

One of the students in the group has finished their pie and wandered off. Eric needs to get going before the tour turns into two people awkwardly following him around because they’re both too polite to leave the other one alone (which has happened before and Lord if he’s eager not to have a repeat of _that_ incident; he’d had to slip away when the two had ended up arguing quietly but furiously over who should leave first, and then kissing, just as furiously but not _nearly_ as quietly).

“So, there _are_ a number of group study rooms in here, but if y’all don’t mind, we might just skip over Study Room F,” Eric says, turning to walk up the stairs. “Every time I go past _that_ one, they’re either causing some unholy ruckus or giving a weird motivational speech.”

He shakes his head. This _school_.

.

As tours go, it goes well. He only messes up two of his historical facts, and even then nobody seems to notice that he tells them that Borchert Hall was erected twenty years before the founding of the school. And, as the cherry on the metaphorical pie of his day, he actually _gains_ a whole three students instead of losing any! The first two seem to come as a pair– a blonde girl who is as tall as her partner is short, both wearing volleyball gear and shining in that way girls tend to when they’ve been playing sports. They hang to the back, but seem genuinely interested in what Eric has to say. He tells himself firmly to make sure they get gift bags at the end of the tour; no listeners as diligent as they should go unrewarded.

The third addition to the group, though… Eric isn’t sure at first whether he’s actually joined the group or if he’s looking to recruit accomplices to rob the nearest Burger King. He’s tall, and well-built (as far as Eric can tell, underneath the hoodie and cap and ill-fitting jeans and _god-blessed bright yellow sneakers, oh, honey_ ), and follows at a slightly awkward distance, not saying a single word the entire tour. He barely shows his face; Eric holds out judgement on whether or not he’ll get a gift bag. He _is_ being pretty rude.

But strange awkward men notwithstanding, he’s proud of the morning’s work. Now, a few of the students who didn’t have classes to get to are sitting in the cafeteria, nearly empty at 10 in the morning, finishing off the excess pies Eric made and casually chatting. Eric himself is talking to the two volleyball girls– or March and April, as he’s learned, which he thinks is _absolutely fantastic_ and which April apparently bemoans daily.

“It’s the worst, honestly,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Like, I love March and everything, but having matching names is not nearly as cute as you probably think it is. You have _no idea_ how many people ask where May and June are.”

March’s peppy grin hasn’t budged all morning, and it only gets bigger listening to her girlfriend’s griping. “But it just means that we were _totally_ destined to meet! My _dear_ April, I fully intend to name our children May and June, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

April rolls her eyes again, but smiles, and lets herself be pulled in closer to March’s side, planting a kiss on her cheek as she goes. “Dork.”

The warm and fuzzy part of Eric’s heart lights up watching them. “You guys really are so cute,” he says, putting a hand to his face and beaming at them. “If y’all ever need an over-enthusiastic supporter for a game, I’m there.”

They grin at him– or, well, March continues to grin while the corner of April’s mouth quirks upwards– and then an alarm goes off on April’s phone and she leans down to grab her bag. “C’mon, babe, we’ve got class,” she says, standing up. March shoots up to her full 5’11 height and smiles at Eric (it’s more like she directs her already-smiling face at her next target, but Eric isn’t complaining if it means he gets to see someone enjoying themselves at Greendale), linking her hand with April’s.

“It was really great meeting you, Eric!” she says from about two feet above his head. “Don’t be a stranger, alright?”

“Of course! And don’t forget to let me know about your favourite pies– it’s absolutely _imperative_ information,” he replies. “I can’t go around just foisting desserts that you don’t even like on you like some kind of _monster_ , can I?” April and March depart with a wave and a hug respectively, and Eric glows at the knowledge of having made someone feel welcome in their new school. It’s satisfying, to do this job well– to do _any_ job well, really, but hospitality is in his blood and bones and even if it’s just giving a tour of a third-rate community college, well, it’s still something he was born to do.

He’s still smiling and staring idly at his phone when someone else approaches, casting something of an ominous shadow over him. Eric fights down the instinctual flash of panic that comes with having someone looming and looks up to see the guy with the moustache from earlier. He’s grinning lopsidedly, and has lost his shirt somewhere between the start of the tour and now.

“Oh!” Eric says, shocked at his own forgetfulness. “Lord, I’m sorry, but I meant to talk to you. When you were asking about the library, you know– did you want me to talk to someone about student housing? All the dorms are full, but I’m sure we could–”

He’s cut off by the moustache guy waving his hands in dissent. “Brah, _thank you_ , I seriously mean that, but it’s fine,” he says. “I’ll be fine. The student assistance can go to people who really need it, you feel?” He rocks back on his heels and smiles at Eric, shaking out his hair unconsciously.

“Are you sure, sir?” Eric says. “Someone in need is someone in need. And I’d feel just awful letting you leave here without _some_ kind of help. Morals aside, that darn tenacious Southern hospitality is bred right into me.” He tries to hit the balance between sincere offer of assistance and self-directed joke; judging by the way the guy’s smile cracks open into a grin, it works.

“I swear, man,” the mustachioed guy says. “I’ll survive. I have other options; I was just seeing if anything right close to school was available.” He pauses, and then frowns slightly (curse Eric’s overactive sense of self-preservation that makes his heart quicken at that tiny movement of eyebrows) and squints. “The reason I came over, actually… do I know you from somewhere?”

Eric’s stomach drops, and irrationally, he thinks, _I should have known they’d send someone to find me eventually_ , and then his logic kicks in and he realises that a) the accent in the man’s voice is nowhere near Georgian enough to be a plant from his family, and b) he has the same suspicion that he’s seen the guy somewhere before. He’s sure it wasn’t at home– though the facial hair wouldn’t be out of place on some of his dad’s relatives– but he can’t think of where exactly he would have met someone like this. “I… maybe?” Eric says, pursing his lips. “You’re not from Georgia, I assume. Are you from the area? I might have seen you around while shopping or something.”

“No,” says the guy. His moustache twitches when he mirrors Eric’s thoughtful expression. “No, I’m from Boston. Never been down south. And I only got into town recently, so I don’t think it’s that… Oh! Fuck!” He snaps his fingers. “Did you by any chance go to Samwell?”

“Oh, lord, for half a year,” Eric says, feeling his ears go red. “I don’t– uh. I think I would have remembered hair like that in my classes, though.” He carefully doesn’t mention hockey. He doesn’t–

Doesn’t like to think about that much.

“No! Oh! Oh, man, I know where I know you from,” says the guy, seemingly undeterred. “I helped run the tadpole tour for the hockey team in 2013! I mean, I ended up dropping out because my shithead father cut me off and kicked me out for being too politically loud, but I _totally_ remember this tiny southern golden boy making eyes at the student kitchens.” He sighs, almost wistfully.

“Um,” says Eric, slightly uncomfortable. “I don’t think I caught your name?” If this conversation keeps up then he’s going to ask about hockey, or why he left Samwell, or why he rocketed from Georgia to Massachusetts and then ended up backwards in Colorado of all places, and Eric– isn’t in the mood to answer questions like that.

“Shitty. Shitty Knight,” Shitty– apparently– says amiably. “I mean, that’s what I like people calling me, rather than the bullshit name my dad picked out.” He sticks a hand out for Eric to shake, smiling, and nothing about him seems to follow any sort of pattern, and Eric, despite all odds, finds himself shaking his hand and smiling back.

“Well, Shitty Knight,” he says, “I’m glad to re-make your acquaintance.”

Eric ends up sending Shitty off with his phone number, dorm number, and the promise of a strawberry cream pie ready for him at any time of the day.

_Samwell_ , he thinks, and then resolves to stop thinking about Samwell.

.

(November, 2013)

Samwell is great, but hockey is hockey and checking is checking and Eric is Eric and he still ends up out cold on the ice at the slightest touch.

“I have to quit,” he says to the coaches in their office after a practice where he’d missed all his passes and crumpled into a ball when Wicks brushed his shoulder. “I’m– I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone that I’m not cut out for this.”

“Bittle,” says Coach Murray in that faux-gentle voice that says things like _we’re gonna have to let you go_ and _this is for the best_. “We’ve tried to work through this whole physicality issue, but–”

“I know, Coach,” Eric says quietly. “It’s okay. I– there’s no point keeping dead weight on your team.” He tries his best at a smile, but it’s kind of rendered pointless by the tears threatening to overflow onto his red cheeks. “And I’m not enjoying myself, and it’s hurting my grades, and it’s only a matter of time before I get myself concussed.”

Coach Hall sighs and takes off his glasses. “You’ve got great skills, Bittle, and if you’d shown any improvement with your checking issue then all we’d be saying is for you to buckle down and skate through it. But it’s well into the season and you’re still coming back to us with the same problem. We can’t afford this happening in the playoffs.”

At least he doesn’t mince words.

Eric nods politely and says he knows and says thank you and gets all the way out to the loading dock before he lets himself cry properly.

So Samwell is great, but an athletic scholarship means nothing if you quit the team, and all too suddenly he’s back in Georgia because he can’t afford tuition at an Ivy League school in Massachusetts, and his mama is crying, and–

Then the rest of it.

He doesn’t want to think about the rest of it right now.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

It’s a sunny day towards the middle-end of August when Jack Zimmermann steps foot on Greendale campus. In retrospect, that was probably the point of no return.

Greendale is, generally, not somewhere one goes voluntarily; it’s more of a last-ditch effort or walk of shame that highlights whatever situation in your life led you to attend _community college_ in _Colorado_ of all places. Most places of learning aim to leave their students with a sense of fulfillment and renewed zest for life. Greendale is a sort of fulfillment vampire. Its standards are lower than are probably morally or legally acceptable. The staff is underpaid, the resources are outdated and obsolete, the buildings are in dire need of repairs, and the classes, more often than not, don’t actually teach any real-world skills or knowledge. Nobody _cares_. There’s a distinct atmosphere of settling for scraps in the foundations of the school.

Like, Jack can _see_ three people sleeping on the ground from where he’s standing, such is the lack of motivation of Greendale students. (On closer inspection, one of those people might be dead.)

Jack briefly considers turning around and walking all the way back to his apartment.

The gentle truth is that Greendale is not a prestigious school. (The harsh truth is that it’s a _fucking awful_ school and it’s constantly on the knife-edge of losing funding, but everybody knows that even if they don’t say it.)

Jack probably could have gotten into an Ivy League if he’d wanted to– his mother’s alma mater had had its arms wide open to gently guide him back into the world of real hockey four years ago, and any kind of degree from Samwell is not to be sniffed at. He could have studied something that sounds great on a certificate (history, maybe, or go whole hog and do physical education or sports coaching), found a nice team of college kids to propel him through the NCAA, graduated with the great marks he knows he’s capable of and been offered any number of contracts before he even stepped out the door. But instead he’d waved away the idea of using college as a stepping stone, pretended not to use his father’s name to get a one-way contract with the Pens, and dove headfirst into the world of professional hockey, where he’d always belonged.

(He still thinks about it, sometimes. That split second where he’d considered taking a more roundabout route to redemption. Whether he’d missed a chance.)

But, really, Greendale being so drastically subpar is kind of in Jack’s favour. Its most notable alumnus is an actor he’s never heard of and the school’s Wikipedia page has sections titles _Scandals (major)_ , _Scandals (minor)_ , and _Scandals (publicity stunts)_ ; who would really expect Jack Zimmermann, twice-over prodigal son of the hockey world to go _here_? Greendale isn’t a hockey town by any means; still, the chances of someone recognising him on the street aren’t zero, so he leaves his apartment in nondescript clothes and a cap tilted down to cover his eyes, avoiding any possible identifying hockey-related clothes and taking a more sparsely populated running route. Honestly, though, it’s not like his life hinges on getting a good education here. It’s just a distraction, really. An idle pursuit of something he’s always wanted to do.

There’s no real reason he’s here so early before his first class– an analysis of _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ , which he’d signed up for nearly instantaneously– other than to get a feel for the place. He’s only talked to the Dean over email and the phone, and that was mostly to discuss keeping the media away from him to the best of the school’s ability, so he hasn’t seen much of the campus outside of the glimpse he gets every morning on his run, which offers a view of the library, some trees, and a statue in the centre of the quad. Sure, he has a map, but he’s always been more of a visual learner– he likes to see things for himself, understand how to get from point A to point B in person.

He’s about to head out to walk the perimeter of the campus and get his bearings when a group of people walk past in the middle distance, led by someone who clearly knows where they’re going. The leader is pointing out buildings and pathways and features at every pause, and the people following are watching with varying levels of interest. Jack watches them for a moment, then pulls his cap down over his eyes and trails closer. He ends up just within earshot of the guide (who turns out to be blond and short and with a really cute accent, which is just incredibly frustrating for Jack) but far enough from the group that none of them could easily tell who he is. There might be a press embargo on all things Jack Zimmermann, but that’s probably not going to stop a determined ‘fan’ with a blog and a smartphone.

And the thing is, Jack is used to the invasion of privacy that comes with being in the public eye. He’s used to the flash of a camera in the corner of his eye when he’s out running, or buying groceries, or sitting on a bench. It’s been a part of his life since he was a baby. So he’s grown something of a thick skin towards it. But right now– fresh off the second scandal of his career, because he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut and just skate through– he doesn’t think he can handle that. Being cut open and dissected and having someone on the internet slice through his layers and clutch at his bleeding organs like they’re meant for public consumption; take a grainy picture of him and say: Jack Zimmermann _exists_ in Colorado– what does this _mean_?

So. He’s just going to be cautious for a few weeks.

He follows the tour for the rest of the duration (he regrets missing the start, but a good three-quarters of the school is covered while he’s there, so it’s not too bad) and then quietly ducks away at the end, when the guide is saying, “If those of you who don’t have classes to get to want to follow me back to the cafeteria, I’ve got a fresh batch of peanut butter cookies waiting for you to sink your teeth into!”

It’s not really avoidance. He _does_ have a class to get to, after all.

.

(June, 2015)

Winning the Stanley Cup for the second time should probably make him feel way more excited than this, but all Jack can think about is the past.

It had started out so well. There he was: twenty-one year old Jack Zimmermann playing third line for the Pittsburgh Penguins, coming back from a couple of years off for reasons he never says to interviewers, even though they all knew already– it seemed like he’d just had a tiny skip on the record, and then he was right back to the flow of the music. He played hockey and everyone whispered about those two missing years and he played some damn good hockey and Kent looked at him sadly across the puck when the Pens were up against the Aces and _the whole team really pulled together to play some great hockey_ and so he’s– not _enjoying_ his life, maybe, but feeling like he’s doing something right for once.

Except, of course, anxiety never really goes away. It just hides in folds and corners and pretends to be tamed until it flares up and he sits in his empty apartment at midnight and thinks: _Is this all there is?_ A few years ago he would have been appalled that he’d think there could be anything of a bigger purpose to his life than to play hockey, but… he’s twenty-four now, and he’s been in the NHL for four seasons, and he’s won _two Stanley Cups_ and he still stays up some nights braced with the fear of failure and he doesn’t know if he can do this for another season, another potential Stanley Cup, another year of sports critics commenting on everything he does and how it measures up to his father–

He doesn’t know if he can survive playing hockey.

Which is a scary thought, for someone who has survived so much for the sake of hockey. Who has given everything he has and more so he can play. Who has cut out the soft parts of his heart and skated through the blood so he can feel the ice.

It’s not like his anxiety or anything else that tick-tick-ticks in his head has been fixed by living his dream of being in the NHL. If anything, it’s even _harder_ – to come back from a rehab scandal and to have his own mind actively working to ruin him half the time, sometimes it feels like the odds are deliberately stacked against him. He’d love to just _tell_ everyone that some days he wakes up and doesn’t want to do anything, let alone play hockey so hard he bleeds, but the ever-pervasive attitude of _suck it up_ that runs through professional sport as an institution makes that terrifying.

Right now he’s sitting down on some nondescript couch in the sunken living room in his apartment, looking at his hands, and thinking about how he’s going to be on television tomorrow, talking about winning the Stanley Cup, about legacy, about his shining career. It’s so quiet; empty guest rooms and hallways, sparsely furnished spaces and blank walls. He has friends, sure– the team is great, and he hangs out with them at bars often enough that they keep their teasing light– but he’s lonely, right at his core, and it hurts.

And that’s another thing– he doesn’t know if he can survive being closeted for the rest of his professional career.

Jack has known that he’s liked men for a long time. There was– there was Kent, obviously, and after the overdose he’d made efforts to not keep any huge secrets from his parents, so they know as well, and they’ve always done their utmost to make home a safe place for him, but being surrounded by the hypermasculinity and casual homophobia of hockey culture starts to _grate_ after a while.

He hasn’t come out to _anyone_. Everyone who works for the Pens is great, and Jack knows that they won’t just write him off as a ruined career and out him unceremoniously, but he just… doesn’t feel like it’s right. So he’s trapped between lying about who he is until he can retire from hockey, or giving the media something so delicious they’ll strip him to the bone in minutes. It’s hard.

He clenches his fists and thinks about what would happen if he just did it on live tv tomorrow. If he just… tore the bandaid off in one go. Would it hurt less? Or would it just cause so much trouble he’d be completely unable to ever play again?

His mouth twists wryly. Maybe that’s just how it has to be.

(The next day, at a scheduled press conference where the whole team is grinning and glowing from the glee of winning the Cup, a journalist asks Jack if he sees himself catching up to his father’s four Stanley Cups over the next few seasons, and someone else butts in and asks if he sees himself catching up to his father’s famous skill with the ladies, and something in Jack just gives up entirely and he does maybe the stupidest thing he could possibly do.

It’s not like he says, specifically, “I’m bi and I’m quitting hockey,” but he might as well have.

So then PR is left with a veritable hurricane of media to deal with and Jack makes sure they know that he was entirely serious– yes, about everything– and just like that, he’s out and his career is over.

He’d thought it would have been harder, but then, he’s never been the greatest at accurately predicting how badly he’ll fuck up his life.)

.

And back, again:

(November, 2009)

There’s an exercise they introduce him to in therapy, to ground himself when the world feels like it’s spinning out of control and the tips of his fingers go numb. His therapist says– leaning forward and passing him a printout with a picture of a hand, her straight black hair moving like silk with the unhurried incline of her neck– that when he can’t see any way out of the maze anxiety constructs and constricts around him, he should focus on his senses. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. List five things he can see around him, four things he can hear, three he can touch, two he can smell, one he can taste. Bring his consciousness back inside his body by moving his attention to the certainty of sensation in the physical world, rather than the dizzy-spinning circular thoughts in his head.

After the hour is up and Doctor Miller waves with a sad smile as he walks out of her office, he sits in his room and looks at the messily-folded sheet of paper; puts his own trembling hand over the black and white outlined one.

Jack can see: white walls; white bedsheets; white ceiling; white paper; white knuckles.

Jack can hear: footsteps; subdued murmurs; nondescript birds; his stubborn heartbeat.

Jack can feel: the sharp edge of the bedframe; paper thin between his fingers; cold tiles.

Jack can smell: flowers; chemicals.

Jack can taste: vomit in his mouth.

(Some of those might have been memories bleeding through, but either way, he doesn’t feel much calmer for counting.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

French 101 is held in a classroom that was apparently painted by a collective of avant-garde preschoolers, judging by the questionable palette and haphazard application. There’s a whole catalogue of paint colours in one smallish space, and the effect is a bit distracting; the wall opposite the door migrates from muddy green to periwinkle to saffron to indigo.

Adam stops in the doorway when he sees the inside of the room. He checks his schedule, to make sure this is the French classroom and not some experimental art piece he’s walking into, but Room B-7 is right there on the course listing. The teacher doesn’t seem to be present yet– it’s still five minutes before ten– but there’s a not-insignificant number of students already seated. There’s a whole row empty at the back, apart from one short girl he thinks he’s seen before, and he briefly considers becoming that guy who sits brooding in the corner and then astonishes everyone by getting top marks, but decides that’s too much effort to put into curating an image and instead looks at an organised-looking guy in the middle row who Adam recognises from the campus tour and who seems to be around his age. He’s dark-skinned and has closely cropped hair, and he’s looking very intently at the desk like it holds an alluring secret.

The other seats are occupied by an array of people, including some who are probably already fluent in French and just need the formality of a language credit, doe-eyed couples in search of new and badly-pronounced terms of endearment, a group of guys that Adam knows for a fact play lacrosse, and a few standard Greendale students (i.e., unmotivated, unimpressive, uninteresting). Adam deliberates for maybe half a second and sits next to the guy who is still engaged in a staring contest with the table.

“Hey,” he says as he puts his bag down on the floor. “Is it cool if I sit here?”

The guy nods absently, then seems to catch up with the fact that someone spoke to him. He does a very photogenic double-take and blinks at Adam. “Hold up, _Birker_?” he says incredulously, voice noticeably Canadian, which Adam is very adept at picking up on. He has brown eyes and dresses like a fashionable middle-aged golfer. “Like, Brick Wall Birker?”

Adam bites his lip at the nickname but doesn’t protest. “Yeah,” he says. “But– nobody calls me that now. Just Adam is fine. Or Birkholtz, if you wanna be like that, I guess. Birker was kind of a boring nickname anyway.”

The guy nods, and the spark in his sleep-lined eyes doesn’t die down. “Justin Oluransi, relatively big fan. I– I _thought_ I recognised you on the tour, but I didn’t want to, like… bring it up in public, or whatever? Dude, can I just say– the Avalanche squandered the _hell_ out of you. You play fantastic defense, and they barely brought you out at all for most of the season. Like, the Bruins just hand them this amazing d-man on a silver platter, and they keep him on the bench?” Justin shakes his head mournfully. “Shameful.”

“Yeah,” frowns Adam, unused to people from Colorado praising his playing. “But, like, I just didn’t have what they were looking for in a defenseman, I guess. The guy they always paired me with– I played too aggressively with him, we never _connected_ like you’re supposed to.” His mouth turns down at one corner. “And then, y’know. My knee. So it was kind of a disappointing end to my career.”

Smiling ruefully, Justin rests a hand on his shoulder and says, “I think your playing style is perfect. I stopped keeping up with hockey at the start of the year, because– um.” He breaks off, looking confused and conflicted for a moment, then schools his face into a positive expression again. “But I always thought we played a lot alike. I really admired that, y’know? You were always so sure of where you were shooting, it was the other guy who couldn’t connect.”

“You play too?” Adam says, mildly surprised. Justin, with his bright but anxious eyes, his taut shoulders, his unsure way of holding himself, like he’s worried he’ll topple at the slightest breath of wind, doesn’t really look like a hockey player. But then– Adam himself is probably the model d-man, and he didn’t turn out all that amazing. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that. “Juniors, or NCAA? Defense, I assume.”

Brown eyes flick down and away and then track a rapid circular path back up to meet Adam’s gaze. “NCAA, but not for a while now. I only played one year of college hockey. Couldn’t keep up with that and academics at the same time. But yeah, defense. Ranser, they called me, the bio major with a side of ice.” His tone has slid from conversational to tight and careful, and Adam’s forehead creases minutely; did he say something out of line?

“Well,” Adam says, feeling like he’s missed something, “thanks. For– y’know, not calling me a waste of cap space like so many other Avalanche fans did.”

Justin’s face breaks out into a stunning grin, and only his eyes keep that wariness in them. “Dude. Anytime.” His hand squeezes Adam’s shoulder for a second more, then drops down to the desk.

Adam taps his fingers on his knee, watches the teacher walk into the room and look dismayed at the amount of people taking French 101. Thinks about the barely-there tremor in Justin’s voice. “Hey,” he whispers, leaning across, even though the teacher is busy throwing back a scalding mug of coffee while looking out the window and shedding a single tear and is thus clearly not paying attention to their conversation, “did you want to get together somewhere and study after class? I hear the pop quizzes come pretty hard and fast here, and, uh– the library looks pretty decent.”

Justin looks down at the desk and presses his eyes shut tightly and doesn’t answer for a moment. Adam almost feels insulted– like the thought of studying with him is so awful Justin needs to brace himself– but then he looks at the way Justin’s hands are shaking and just feels bad.

“I– no stress, dude, if you already have plans. I’m just some rando in your French class, right?” Adam says quickly, looking away. “No pressure.”

“No,” says Justin, and when Adam looks back at him, he’s smiling again. “No, sure, that sounds great. I have Biology at two, but until then– I’m free.”

There’s a moment of silence where Adam tries to decide if he’s genuinely done something to hurt or offend Justin, but he returns the smile anyway. “After class, then. I can pick your Canadian brain, and you can, um. I don’t have anything to offer in this partnership, dude, sorry.”

“Psh. First, _French_ French is different to Quebecois French; second, I’m from Toronto. I don’t even speak it that well,” Justin says. “And you do _so_ have something to offer, man. You have a stockpile of outrageous NHL stories to regale me with. Right?”

“Right,” says Adam, and then the teacher turns around and says “ _Bonjour_ ,” in a gravelly tone reminiscent of noir films, so they both start paying attention.

.

(Feb, 2015)

Adam blinks.

(Whenever he shuts his eyes he almost thinks he’s back on the ice– third period, brought off the bench for once in a floundering attempt to even a 4-1 imbalance; the Oilers right winger cuts across him in the split second after he passes the puck off, and he’s slammed into the boards, and something in his right leg goes _pop_ and there’s an almighty wrongness in the way he can’t feel his knee proper and he buckles and falls and the guy who checked him smirks down at where he’s splayed on the ice. He can’t seem to move his leg. The Avalanche scored just before he went down, even though there’s only a few scant minutes left in the game, and the stadium is roaring; the guy above him mutters, darkly, “Not much of a brick wall, are you, really?” and skates off. Suddenly there’s people on the ice– helping him to his numb buzzing feet– and all he can think is that maybe that stupid nickname will finally lose traction.)

He opens his eyes again and the icepack in his hand slides sideways off his knee. “Keep that steady, Mr Birkholtz,” says the nurse at his side, nudging his wrist to keep the ice positioned over the swelling. Post-surgery aftercare: lots of ice, lots of rest, lots of well-meaning nurses telling you what to do.

The doctor sighs and frowns and taps her pen on her clipboard. “I’m sorry, Adam,” she says, sounding sincere even though she must have said the same thing to thousands and thousands of people before. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry that surgery isn’t a guaranteed fix. I’m sorry for getting your hopes up. I’m sorry your career is over._

“What– what went wrong?” he says, voice shaky, hands loose. The nurse taps his wrist again and Adam holds the towel-wrapped icepack tighter and bites his tongue.

Pen taps on clipboard. Doctor sighs. Doctor frowns. Doctor smiles falsely. “Sometimes it just doesn’t work. With a few months of physical therapy, you’ll get mobility back in your knee, but…” She chews on her lip, as if putting off saying the obvious makes it less true. “But high-impact sports are off the table, Adam, I’m sorry.”

Adam thinks: _I’m twenty-three and I’m retiring from the NHL._

“I– thank you,” he says, because he’s a polite boy. “Thank you for doing everything you could to help.”

The nurse says, “I’ll set up some appointments with our physical therapist for you, okay, Mr Birkholtz?” and Adam kind of wants to punch him.

“That’d be great,” he says instead.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

French goes fine, really. The teacher– who introduces himself as Professor François Dupont– seems chronically disenchanted with the world, but he does at least know how to speak the language, and the class leaves the room knowing a small array of greetings and farewells, as well as the knowledge of an introductory pop quiz on Friday. A few students parrot Dupont’s half-hearted _au revoir_ back at him as they leave the classroom; Adam opts for a smile and a _merci_ on top of the farewell, and Dupont cracks the tired smile of someone who hasn’t been sincerely thanked in a very long time.

Justin doesn’t say anything at all. He’s not– he’s not _rude_ , it’s just that now that French is over, he and Adam are headed to the library, and he’s kind of having trouble focusing on anything apart from the way the word _study_ is multiplying and echoing in his brain. He briefly nods at Dupont on his way out and keeps his head down through the crowd of students surging into the hall ( _too many people too many people too cramped not enough space_ flashes in his mind, unbidden, and he pushes it away with clenched fists and fluttering heart) until they’re out in the open and he’s facing Adam.

“Alright, dude,” Adam says with a cocksure grin that looks natural on his face. “Library? I know it’s only gonna be, like, the basic stuff on the quiz, but I know I’m not gonna get anything done unless someone’s cracking the whip.”

Justin nods, jerkily. “Yeah. Uh, library is this way, right?” he says, glancing over his shoulder and half-turning. The action conveniently hides his face from Adam’s steady gaze. He would really rather his new friend (acquaintance? Study partner?) didn’t scrutinise his anxious eyes too thoroughly.

“Uh,” says Adam. “I’m… not sure? Shit, we only took the tour, like, an hour and a half ago, how did we already forget the layout of this place?” He (kind of endearingly) sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and roots around in his pocket before pulling out the crumpled map they were given on the tour. It hasn’t fared well in the unknown depths of the Birkholtz khakis. Adam unfolds it and comes to stand next to Justin– not quite uncomfortably so, but close enough that their shoulders brush maybe a little too much to be passably bro-like– and Justin obligingly hovers a finger over the map until he finds their current location.

“Ok, so,” he mutters, “I think this is us here–” he stabs down at the paper, near an annotation that says _Language department– I’d personally advise against Spanish!_ – “and the library is… just through here.” He traces a short path across the creased paper and looks down the hallway.

“Sweet!” says Adam, folding up the map. “Onwards and upwards.”

The hallways aren’t busy, but there’s enough people wandering around and providing background chatter for the walk not to feel awkward. A few times, Justin contemplates starting a conversation, but he can’t think of anything to say that isn’t about either hockey or studying, the former of which seems a bit insensitive to bring up, and the latter…

He would say that he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it, but– to extend the metaphor– he’s currently running full-speed towards it and it doesn’t seem to be getting any less rickety.

Out of nowhere, Adam says, “So how about that tour guide, right? He’s mad cool. I wonder if he sells his stuff professionally, or if we could just get into his pie’s good graces by becoming his friend.” Justin recognises the careful lightness in his tone– he’s intentionally bringing up a neutral topic. Which– is kind of good and bad at the same time. On one hand, it’s an easy subject of conversation, a shallow distraction for the few minutes it’ll take to walk to the library; on the other, it shows that Adam’s picked up on his anxiety enough to tread softly around it. Justin feels his fingers twitch. Is he that transparent?

He takes the out, though. “Yeah, dude,” he says, matching Adam’s conversational tone. “Even outside the baking, he seems like an upstanding bro. Bit too enthusiastic about Greendale, though, don’t you think?” He twists a wry smile. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t come here for the renowned academic programs.”

Thankfully, Adam laughs as well. “God, _no_ ,” he says. “I mostly came here because I already live pretty close nearby, and, like, I didn’t really want to go straight to an actual college. This is… like, it sucks and all, but I’d imagine it’s _way_ less intense than proper university classes and all that.” He blinks, and seems to sense that he’s cutting a bit too close to a tender area, but thankfully their brief conversation has brought them to the library. Justin breathes in the too-dry air and pretends he isn’t scared.

The infamous Group Study Room F is blessedly empty, which means that the library isn’t in imminent danger of anything apart from structural collapse, but that’s standard for most Greendale buildings. Adam and Justin choose an out-of-the-way table behind a shelf full of books about air conditioners and unceremoniously drop their bags on the carpet. Justin sits down and looks at the table.

After a moment, Adam says, “So, we should… study, right?”

“Yeah.” Justin doesn’t move to take his textbook out of his bag. “Study, uh, yeah.”

Adam lets out a great sigh through his nose and puts his hands flat down on the table. “Listen, dude,” he says, falteringly. “Did I… have I accidentally done something to make you hate me? Because if I have, I want to know so I can apologise properly.”

Justin looks up quickly from where he’s tracing the lines of the wood grain with his eyes and meets Adam’s gaze. “Wh-what?” he coughs out. “Why would you… you haven’t done anything, man. What makes you think I hate you?” God, he’s such an _asshole_ , letting his anxiety get the better of him, letting it turn him cold and jagged and unfair to someone who’s genuinely trying to be _nice_ to him.

“You just look…” Adam trails off and chases Justin’s flagging line of sight where it drops away in shame. “You’ve been looking terrified ever since class started, and I was the one who pushed the whole study idea, and I know it can be hard to say no, even when someone gives you an easy out?” He rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I get that I can be, like, intimidating? Six-four white jock and all that. But I really mean it when I say I’m sorry for whatever I did, okay?”

“Dude, I– it’s _not_ your fault, I swear,” Justin says after a moment. He gives a Herculean effort and lifts his head so he’s looking straight at Adam again; Adam’s eyes look genuinely sincere in their wide blueness. “It’s just,” he starts again, and flicks his eyes away, down to his bag, where his French textbook is. “I’ve got… a _thing_. With studying. Anxiety disorder, you know. It’s– I dropped out before my junior finals because I couldn’t take the stress, and I had a pretty wicked breakdown, and it was… I just can’t– think about studying without thinking about that?” He says it like a question, even though it’s his own experiences he’s spilling to this almost-stranger, this low-level celebrity. “And, like, I chose to come here because– you know, community college, you can coast pretty easy without studying, but… you offered, and I didn’t… didn’t want to just completely write off my academic side, I guess?” His fingers tap absently on the underside of the table. “So it really isn’t your fault. It’s just my stupid mental block about studying.” He gives a half-hearted shrug and attempts to smile at Adam to lessen the weight of what he’s explained.

Instead of laughing it off or agreeing with him that he needs to get over it like Justin expected, Adam purses his lips and says, “Is there anything I can do to help with your anxiety? Do I need to back off, or do you like company when you’re anxious?” He sounds so– unfazed by it all. Justin stares at him. “What?” he says. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” says Justin. “You, um. I guess I’m just used to jocks, like… thinking I’m making a big deal out of nothing? This is… thanks, Adam.” Finally the worried line of his mouth falls into a smile– Adam isn’t going to leave him shaking under a table and laugh and tell him he needs to man up. He wants to help.

“Man, if people think you’re just overreacting, then they can overreact to my fist in their face,” says Adam. “So did you just want to hang for a while, or did you want to give studying a go?” He says it so… evenly, so honestly; he really doesn’t mind which option Justin would prefer. He’s not putting pressure on him, but he’s offering some direction so his mind doesn’t spiral into inaction from trying to find a path in the thousands of possibilities.

“I… I think that maybe today, we can just hang?” Justin says, and then nods. “Yeah. Just. Just chill for today.” Adam smiles with his big white teeth and leans back. “But,” Justin continues, tentatively, “I would like to study. Eventually. Do you think… would you want to help? With that?” He pauses, and Adam nods amicably. “Like, keeping it casual, trying to get rid of this negative association I have with studying. You don’t have to, obviously, but…” He trails off and lets the sentence hang with all the multitudes of ways he could have finished it. _But I feel really comfortable around you. But I think we’d work well together. But you’re the first person outside my family who’s bothered to sincerely offer me help in a long time._

“Chyeah, of course,” Adam says, because he is a jock, after all. “No problem. What are bros for?” He reaches a fist across the table for Justin to knock his own against.

Justin smiles to himself. If he could tell himself from last year that in 2015 he’d be fistbumping with Brick Wall Birker in a shitty community college in Colorado, he’d give his future self the weirdest goddamn look. Although that would mostly be because of the whole time travel thing, he supposes.

“Bros,” he says. He grins and returns the fistbump, and–

His heart jolts for a second, like it’s found a more intense rhythm to beat to, when his knuckles meet Adam’s. It’s something he can’t put a name to, but when he meets Adam’s gaze and sees the disbelief and happiness written there too, he knows it was mutual. A spark, maybe.

“ _Bro_ ,” says Adam, wonderingly, and then he starts singing the chorus of _I Wanna Get Better_ at the top of his lungs (“I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS LONELY TIL I SAW YOUR FAAACE!” “Dude, oh my _god_ , shut _up_ , you’re so embarrassing–”) until a library assistant comes over and tells them to quiet the hell down. Justin giggles quietly through the whole affair, and his shoulders relax, and they spend the next hour talking about how good Toy Story 3 was, and then about how it’s possible they would have met at Niagara Falls if they hadn’t come to Greendale, and _then_ about the best hockey stories they can think of. By the time he has to leave for Biology, Justin isn’t even thinking about studying, or school at all. He’s thinking about how well he and Adam get along, even in that first genesis of a friendship, and how they can already quote large portions of SpongeBob episodes (Justin squeaks out a decent approximation of SpongeBob himself while Adam hits the perfect impression of _Is mayonnaise an instrument?_ ), and how it’s so easy to just laugh and talk and smile and have fun with Adam.

It’s definitely the start of something.

.

(April 2015)

The problem with spending a year on a college hockey team is that it kind of irrevocably forms your social circle around jocks. Not that that’s inherently a bad thing, and the guys on the team are nice enough, but now that Justin’s thrown in his lot with them (despite having quit the team specifically to focus on his schoolwork!), the proper academic friend groups won’t even give him the time of day. Even though he hasn’t played hockey for almost two years, he’s still shown somewhat of a cold shoulder by study groups. Just because the hockey team is, granted, a bit _loud and disruptive_.

So Justin is used to studying alone. And clenching his fists alone. And staring at his textbooks alone as the words swim across the page into inscrutable patterns and symbols that spell doom for his GPA. That’s what he’s doing right now, in the back corner of the library, because his _fucking Bio final_ is tomorrow and he doesn’t know these _fucking definitions_ and he’s going to fail and ruin his life and he’s trying so hard but clearly _not hard enough_.

He’s shaking.

The next day he doesn’t go to his exam because he’s too busy sitting under a table and crying and he calls his mother and says he wants– he _needs_ – to go home, and she says she’s so, so, so proud of him, no matter what, and that he’s worked so hard.

He formally withdraws from Harvard University, goes home to Toronto, and sleeps for fourteen hours in his own bed.

He burns his study notes in the fire.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

So it’s not that Eric is failing French. Failing is such a harsh word. He prefers to think that he’s… distributing his motivation to areas outside academia.

“You’re failing French,” says Professor Dupont flatly.

“But _sir_ ” Eric says. “I’ve taken this class for three semesters already!”

“Exactly,” Dupont says, not moving a single facial muscle. “And you’ve failed all three times. I told you at the end of last semester that you were required to either take summer classes– which you did not– or enrol in French 101 again. Since you didn’t do the former, I took the liberty of putting you in my class again.”

Eric huffs. “I wish bribes worked on you.”

Professor François Dupont is an incredibly unique person, in that he is impervious to barter by way of pastries. Eric knows this because he tried everything in his baking knowledge (from pies to strudels to eclairs to _cronuts_ ) when it became apparent that he would not pass his first semester of French 101; the teacher had taken the food from him without a word and he still got an F, which he thought was _stupidly_ unfair.

“Eric, I’d love to pass you,” says Dupont. “But ever since the whole Chang incident, the Dean is a lot stricter around the language department. He’ll notice.”

“I _know_ , I know,” Eric says, maybe a bit too tersely for a professional conversation. “It’s just annoying is all. And I missed the first class because of my tour, so now I’m even _more_ behind, and– ugh!”

Dupont pats Eric’s hand dispassionately. “Quiz on Friday, first chapter in the textbook, et cetera. You know the drill by now.”

It’s awful that he does know the drill. It’s even worse that he knows it and he’s probably still going to have to study for the test. “Thanks, sir,” he says, because as ungrateful as he is right now he doesn’t want to be rude. Dupont waves him away and puts his head down on his desk and falls asleep instantly.

Eric slips out of the room, only fuming a little. He can’t believe it’s come to this. The worst-case scenario.

He’s going to have to find a study group.

And the thing is, anyone who has attended Greendale for more than a year will tell you that study groups attract the worst kind of drama. Everyone knows about the Spanish study group and their antics; Eric doesn’t want that kind of stress in his life. He doesn’t want to get wrinkles before he turns twenty-one, no thank you _sir_.

But there’s no other choice, really. Eric knows that he’s smart enough to pass this class, but only if he studies. He’s well aware that he’s a chronic procrastinator, and he knows that he’s able to find any excuse to avoid studying in lieu of something actually entertaining, like baking, or going to the local ice rink to do some spins and watch the kids have fun in skates and not worry about being checked or kicked off a team. So unless he has someone ensuring that he doesn’t procrastinate via pastries, as he is so wont to do, he’ll be going nowhere fast in this class.

“Damnit!” he mutters, kicking the wall outside Dupont’s office. Despite his sunny demeanor, he’s not actually close friends with anyone at school. Sure, he has plenty of acquaintances, but there’s a difference between someone you smile and nod at in the hallway and someone you want to spend five hours a week studying French with. He doesn’t even know anyone taking French.

With an annoyed sigh he looks at the time– god, already two in the afternoon? He’s wasted the whole day– and decides he hasn’t made enough baked goods today. (Of _course_ he’s not putting anything off. What a ridiculous suggestion. It’s just absolutely vital that he go to the kitchen _this instant_ and bake, oh, three or four pies. That’s a perfectly rational use of his time.)

He turns on his heel in the direction of the cafeteria, determined to make this bad day semi-decent– and is promptly knocked to the floor by something big and wide and wearing a dark hoodie.

“Shit!” says the something as Eric is falling. A hand shoots out to grab him by the arm ( _if you fight back they’ll just make it worse if you struggle they’ll laugh if you run they’ll catch you_ flashes into Eric’s mind, because he’s been grabbed by large boys before, and it’s never ended well) and he freezes up like he always does when there’s someone big in his space. It makes for an awkward moment where the person who he walked into is holding nearly his whole body weight because his legs decided that not working was the best course of action here; after a moment Eric comes to his senses and pushes himself into a standing position, dancing away and out of reach of the other person in the same movement.

“Sorry, I’m _so_ sorry, I need to look where I’m going,” he says while brushing himself off (which is a good cover story for trying to coax the shake out of his hands). He looks up at the other person, and–

“Oh my gosh! I– you’re not _Adam Birkholtz_?” he gasps. “Lord, I knew I knew that face from the tour! I’m _so_ sorry for walking into you, Mister Birkholtz, I swear I’m not usually this clumsy.”

To his credit, Adam Birkholtz smiles forgivingly and extends a hand to shake. “Sure am,” he says, “but you can just call me Adam. ‘Mister Birkholtz’ is so _fancy_ , dude, I had a poptart for breakfast this morning.”

Eric shakes his hand and tries his hardest not to think about the massive crush he had on Adam when he was seventeen. He narrowly succeeds, if only because celebrity crushes are characterised by the unattainability of the celebrity in question; Adam Birkholtz the hockey player is a lot hotter in theory than Adam Birkholtz who apparently attends community college. (He’s still hot, though. No denying that.)

“Nice to meet you, then, Adam,” he says. “I’m Eric, but you probably already know that. Were you on your way to class? I hope my map hasn’t been leading you wrong.”

“Oh, nah,” Adam says, grinning. His teeth are really something. “On my way back from the library. I’m done with classes for the day. I was just going to, like, stop by the cafeteria? See if there’s anything up for grabs.”

Now _that_ Eric can work with. He claps his hands together in delight. “Well! You’re in luck, my friend! I was just on my way over there to bake up a few signature Bittle pastries. What’s your favourite flavour of pie?”

“Dude.” Adam holds a hand solemnly over his heart. “I thought you’d never ask that question. You just made me the happiest man in the world.” There’s tears in his eyes, and he takes a dramatic shuddery breath and smiles. “It’s blueberry.”

To be honest, Eric is a bit… shocked at how comfortable he feels right now. After the unavoidably awkward start to their chance meeting, he hasn’t actually felt in danger of being beaten up like he usually does around jock-types. Maybe it’s the easygoing air Adam carries in his relaxed shoulders, or the way he’s not invading Eric’s space, or how he’s treating him like a person and not a walking target whose purpose in life is to be the recipient of teenage boys’ misplaced aggression. It’s nice. He notices that his hands aren’t shaking. (He’s still a little flushed, though, because come _on_ , it’s _Adam Birkholtz_. He’s six foot four and could bench press Eric without breaking a sweat.)

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll get you into the kitchen and you can help with the filling.”

So then he’s in a kitchen with Adam sitting on the counter, swinging his legs, and they’ve made the connection of hockey (though Eric changed the subject pretty quickly after it came up) and they’re laughing about Eric’s stories of past incidents at Greendale, and Eric feels that way he did that morning: like this is someone he’s known for years, and they laugh like this regularly. It’s such a welcome break from the casual acquaintanceship he has with pretty much everyone at Greendale that he doesn’t even think before he makes a comment like:

“Lord, you shoulda _seen_ the straight nonsense that was happening in the cafeteria earlier today. Like, they say _we’re_ the drama queens? And then Handsomeface McLawyer and his blonde friend pull that in public?” He snorts. “Honestly.”

There’s a pause in conversation. Eric is suddenly acutely aware that he just came out to Adam– former NHL player, large jock, undeniably a bro– and that he’s cornered himself in a kitchen. Shit. He freezes.

Before Eric can say anything in the way of a denial, though, Adam throws his head back and says, “ _God_ , I know! Like, they can have their torrid romances and love triangles and anguished declarations of love, but the second I kiss a guy, _I’m_ the one being disruptive?” He throws his hands up. “Fuckin’ straight people.”

Eric lets out a breath he’d been holding like his life depended on it. (Which, really, it might have.) “Jesus,” he says, looking straight down at where his hands are clenched tight into the dough. “I, uh.” His head is swimming a little. He smiles dizzily.

Frowning, Adam leans forward. “You okay, dude?” he asks, and he sounds so genuinely concerned that Eric almost wants to cry. “Something I said? Oh, shit.” He pauses and hops down from the counter. “Was that… were you expecting me to be straight? Or, like, an asshole about it?” Gently, he puts his hand on Eric’s shoulder.

“I mean,” Eric says after a moment. “I guess? Uh. I suppose I’m used to guys like–” he pauses and turns slightly so he’s facing Adam and can gesture to his body– “like _you_ being, uh. Not so great about the whole gay thing? I mean, I grew up in small town Georgia, so…”

“It’s fine,” Adam says. “I don’t blame you for assuming. Like, I’ve only ever really been out to close friends, since– hello, hockey!– so I get it. But hey! If anyone gives you grief about it, they can take it up with me.” He puffs out his chest– as if he _needs_ to– and grins down at Eric.

There’s a moment where Eric tries to grin back, but he falters and looks back down at the dough. “Can I just,” he says, and stops. “Can I just talk about something for a minute?” Adam nods and leans back against the counter, keeping a carefully attentive expression on his face. Eric smiles weakly. “Growing up gay in Georgia… it was so tiring, trying to keep that part of myself hidden and quiet and invisible. I thought about it a few times– being publicly out, not having to hide anymore– but I never did it, because of the attitude down there. Like, even at middle school– if you’re different, you’re a target, and you can’t get much more different from football jocks than a 5’3 figure skater who _bakes_ and does routines to _Beyonce_.” He huffs out a laugh. “So they read those signs and I ended up locked in a storage room overnight for my trouble. And then we moved, and I couldn’t do figure skating anymore, but I still loved all those other things, and hockey still wasn’t close enough to football for my dad’s liking, and I– I never even said to myself that I _was_ gay. They’d all just looked at me and seen, yeah, a feminine guy who dresses nice, and they put me in that box before I even knew what gay really meant.”

“That’s rough, dude,” Adam says. “You obvi don’t have to answer, but… have you come out to anyone else? Or am I the first?”

Eric bites his lip. “Not the first.” He doesn’t elaborate, but he hopes Adam gets his meaning.

Adam just nods.

“But, well.” Eric shakes his head and wills away the tears. “I’m here now, and Greendale, as god-awful as it is, is better than Georgia. Like, y’know, we’ve got the Dean, so I’m not really worried about any trouble on his part. I’m trying to– trying to not make it a big deal, I guess? I... I don’t want to feel like I _have_ to come out to anyone, but I’m not planning on going back into the closet.” He smiles and laughs and rolls out the dough. “The whole reason I left is because I couldn’t survive being closeted for the rest of my life, so. Couldn’t get me back in there with a ten-foot pole.”

“I get you,” Adam says. “No worries, dude. And if there’s ever anything I can help with, let me know. _Especially_ if it involves pies.”

Despite himself, Eric grins. “I might just take you up on that offer, Adam.” He turns back to the dough and starts to form it into the crust of the second pie of the day. Apple, maybe, or peach. Something sweet. Add some extra sugar to the lattice to brighten it up. “If you happen to have a French study group hiding somewhere in your pockets, that’d be great,” he mutters after a moment, jokingly. He works out his frustration at the thought of redoing this class for the fourth time by putting all of his upper arm strength behind the rolling pin.

“Dude!” Adam pauses halfway into getting back onto the counter. “No joke, I was in the library because I was studying French with my friend. You take it too? I didn’t see you in class.”

“Well,” Eric says, “I wasn’t there because I was chatting with a few people after the tour, and also I’ve failed that class three times already? So. I was kind of avoiding the fact that I’ll have to take it again.”

“Man, don’t even worry,” says Adam, grinning. “Me and Justin will hook you the fuck up with some sweet study sessions. That language won’t even know what hit it.”

“If you’re sure?” Eric says with a frown. “I won’t be intruding?”

To prove that Eric would be in no way unwelcome, Adam texts Justin ( _BRO THE FUCKIN SWEETASS TOUR GUIDE PIE GUY WANTS TO STUDY WITH US Y/N!!!!! IF U SAY YES PIES FOR DAAYYYSSSS_ ) and gets a response far too quickly for someone who’s supposed to be in class ( _DUDE!!!!!! YYYYYYYYYY [pie emoji] [pie emoji]_ ) and tells Eric, and between the three of them they decide that everyone is free around five, and it’s settled.

It’s kind of shocking, really, that Eric has fallen into a friendship so suddenly. Sure, he _knows_ plenty of people at Greendale– his personality makes sure that he’s had a polite conversation with almost everyone he’s ever met– but he hasn’t had this kind of casual banter that he has with Adam. And the fact that it’s with _Adam Birkholtz_ of all people doesn’t exactly make it any more credible to his mind. It does cross his mind once or twice (cross, and then take up stubborn residence at the back of his brain and fester) that Adam might just be playing the long game, and it’s all a setup and Eric is going to end up inside a locker, but really, Adam seems so genuine and open and real that he can’t help but trust him. Adam ‘helps’ him make three pies and a batch of chocolate chip cookies and licks every bowl and laughs so loudly one of the cafeteria ladies comes over and glares at him for a full minute, and Eric has _fun_.

So _there_. He’s making friends at college. Take _that_ , everyone who said he should just go to UGA along with the people from his high school.

In any case, Adam seems genuine about the study group thing. He admits to having the same problems with procrastination that Eric has (though, Eric thinks privately, probably not to the same extent; _Adam_ hasn’t failed the same entry-level French course three times in a row because he never handed in his homework) and testifies to how great Justin is (“Brah, not to _gush_ or anything, but he is _so smart you would not believe_. He knows _all the bones_.”) and so Eric lets himself hope for a passing grade this semester.

So at quarter to five they finish cleaning up the kitchen and Tupperwareing the pie and cookies and head on over to the library. Campus is quiet, only a few people hanging around for night classes; they take the hallway that connects straight from the language department to the library, which is mostly empty. (Eric doesn’t really want to jinx it by walking innocently past Group Study Room F, though.)

“Justin says he’s where we were earlier, which is, like, behind this bookshelf over that way,” Adam says, waving a hand vaguely. He stops walking for a second and cranes his neck around some shelves, and then turns around and puts a hand on Eric’s shoulder.

It’s mildly alarming. Eric tenses up a little.

Adam looks at him seriously, and says, “Okay, dude, so you should know: Justin has some anxiety probs– and he’s cool with me telling you this, by the way– so, like, try to keep things low-key and calm?”

And to be honest, that is about the exact opposite of what Eric expected to hear from a large jock that he followed without backup into a near-empty library. Adam really is an interesting person.

“Um, of course!” Eric says after the flight reflex leaves his tense heart. “Lord, don’t I know how awful anxiety is. I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” He grins his utmost sunniest and Adam smiles in relief.

“Dude, thanks so much,” he says. “I really don’t want to, like, scare him off or anything. I only met him today and he’s already the coolest friend I’ve ever had.”

They round the corner together and see Justin sitting there at the desk, determinedly swiping at his phone. He looks up briefly and his eyes light up; a microsecond of finishing whatever he was doing on his phone later he’s on his feet and grinning at Adam.

“Bro!” he says in way of greeting.

“Bro!”

“ _B_ _ro_!”

“Bro, I told you I’d bring him,” Adam says, thankfully breaking the bro-combo. Combro? “He’s, like, _so_ great, you have no idea. We made _sooo_ much pie this afternoon!”

Justin sticks out a hand for Eric to shake. Eric appraises him: he’s tall (though a bit shorter than Adam, but still tall enough that he could put Eric in a fireman carry without too much trouble, probably) and handsome, warm-toned dark skin, with friendly eyes and a slightly harried look about him. The harried-ness is downplayed, though, by the way he leans into Adam slightly, like they’re drawn together by some unseen force; it makes him more relaxed in all his joints and lends a mischievousness to his eyebrows. He’s certainly looking more relaxed than he had that morning. (Truthfully, this trend of meeting people from the tour is starting to get a bit eerie, but Eric figures life is throwing him a few pity friendships.)

In terms of fashion– salmon shorts and a nicely cut collared shirt– Eric decides that he already likes Justin. It’s a welcome break from staring at Adam’s haphazard bro-ish dress code all afternoon.

“Nice to properly meet you, Justin! Eric Bittle,” Eric says, shaking the proffered hand, “though you might remember that from earlier. I’ve been getting the play-by-play of your entire friendship with Adam all afternoon. He’s painted a pretty flattering picture!”

The grin he gets from Justin is just _stunning_. (Maybe they’re not pity friendships. Maybe he’s the lead character in a romantic comedy and he’s doomed to be surrounded by handsome young men for the rest of his life. Is that really _doom_ , though?)

They don’t get immediately to business– Justin looks a bit edgy when Eric reaches for his textbook– so instead they start out with conversation, leading to laughter, leading to Adam asking if he can try to see if it’s physically possible for him to lift Eric with one hand, which leads to Eric putting a hole in the drywall at eleven feet up because he can’t keep his balance standing on Adam’s flat palm when Adam is posing for photos.

It’s some sort of chaos, is what it is.

(They book a group study room for the next day at a more sensible time and Eric leaves having studied no French at all, but feeling more optimistic about his academic future than he has in months.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Adam and Justin and Eric fall into a routine exceedingly quickly over the next week. They meet every day, mostly to study, but also because they think it’s really genuinely fun to hang out with each other. The week one pop quiz passes uneventfully; everyone in the class passes with varying altitudes of flying colours.

Dupont doesn’t let up, though; he seems determined to work them hard, which is weirdly at odds with his nihilistic personality. (Apparently, Justin learns, there is a _whole deal_ with him that nobody knows the entirety of. Something to do with clerical errors and being press-ganged into teaching French by the Dean, which pretty well aligns with what he already knows about Greendale.) Regardless of his demeanor, the teacher is pretty even with how he hands out quizzes– they’re set for every Friday for the foreseeable future, which necessitates very regular studying (and equally regular goofing off so they don’t burn out), so their homely little study group is certainly getting its money’s worth.

“I’m just _saying_ , it feels like bad luck to call it a study group,” Eric is saying one day while they walk through the library and to their booked study room– Group Study Room C, far enough from Room F that disruption will be negligible. “Y’all ain’t been around long enough to see what the _other_ group gets up to. The whole concept of study groups is cursed.”

“What?” Justin says, frowning. “C’mon, they can’t be _that_ bad.”

“Did you see the wedding party outside their study room last week?” Eric replies, raising his eyebrows. “They were gonna have a wedding– at school, unplanned, and probably illegally– because some people are too goddamn heterosexual to function. And _then_ they had a fist fight. Or maybe the fight was before the wedding, I can’t remember. But in any case, they do stuff like that _incredibly regularly_. They’re so unaware of their own infamy it ain’t funny. But, like, mention something like, oh, the cruel chicken finger empire? The boating class in the parking lot? People know about that gang of weirdos, and it’s not for any good reasons.”

Justin reaches the table first and sets his books down with a sigh; Adam follows much more theatrically, as he is wont to do. See, Justin thinks Adam is really great, but sometimes he’s just a little bit over the top. He’s fond of big entrances. Here, he’s probably _aiming_ to jump onto the table, but he ends up catching his foot on a chair and stumbling his appreciably dangerous bulk halfway across the room and into a cupboard. The cupboard _bang_ s violently into the wall and Adam slumps against it laughing and then the cupboard says, disgruntled, “Ow, _fuck_!”

There’s silence for a moment.

“Did that…” Justin starts, half-risen from his chair. “Did the cupboard just _talk_?” Hackles instinctively raised, he makes his way across the room to where Adam has jumped a few feet back from the sentient furniture. Eric is looking unimpressed.

“Is someone in there?” Justin asks tentatively, gently tapping his knuckles on the door of the cupboard.

In response, he gets: _CRASH!_ “Shit!” _THUNK BANG_ , which doesn’t sound very comfortable for whoever was inside.

Rolling his eyes, Eric comes over to stand between Adam and Justin, and wrenches the cupboard open to reveal a half-naked guy sitting on the broken interior shelf, bleeding lightly from his arm and with flowers woven into his moustache. (Can you really blame Justin for staring?)

Eric gapes, then says, “Shitty _Knight_?” incredulously.

“I mean,” Adam says, “I sure as hell wouldn’t have had a great night if I slept in a cupboard, but I thought you were more polite than that, Eric.”

“Oh, shit!” says the naked guy. “Hey, Eric! What the hap is fuckening, man?”

“What in the fresh hell are you doing in a cupboard?” Eric asks. “Lord, please tell me you ain’t living in the library. I _told_ you I could talk to student assistance for you, Shitty!”

The guy who Eric keeps calling shitty carefully extracts himself from the ruined innards of the cupboard. He picks some splinters out of his shoulder and examines the minor wound on his upper arm, clearly finding it insufficient for concern, and brushes himself off. “Dude, it’s fine,” he says. “I’m not living here. I was just taking a nap, and then all of a sudden my sleep-cave got rocked to hell and back by some giant.” He looks around and seems to properly notice Adam and Justin for the first time. “Oh, hey! Which one of you disturbed my sacred slumber?”

“Um,” Adam says, stepping forward. “My b, dude. Are… you okay?” He shoots Justin a look that says _I hope I didn’t give him a fucking concussion._

“No sweatsky, Wayne Gretzky,” moustache says. He sticks both his hands out for Justin and Adam to shake. “Shitty Knight. Hail and well met, my dudes.”

“That’s your _name_?” Justin says. “I thought Eric was just really pissed at you or something.” He falters, and then adds on, “Justin Oluransi.”

“Adam Birkholtz,” Adam says. “ _That_ Adam Birkholtz, if you’re a hockey fan.”

“Oh, shit!” says Shitty (which Justin is finding a bit hard to swallow). “You bet your pert hockey glutes I’m a fan. I played for Samwell for two years in the NCAA, and at Andover before that. How weird is that connection, right? Don’t tell me _you’re_ into hockey as well, Justin,” he says, and Justin nods, leading to Shitty throwing his hands up in a _well there you go_ motion.

“It’s not that weird,” Justin says. “It’s a reasonably popular sport. Also, I’m Canadian, so that skews the sample a bit.”

“Anyway,” Eric says, cutting in. “Sorry for the disturbance, Shitty. We were about to get started on our French homework, but you’re welcome to stay and chat if you like?”

Shitty frowns and pulls out a piece of paper with lots of highlighted and crossed-out words. “French, you say? Would that be… French 101 with Dupont?”

“…Yeah?” Adam says. “Why do you ask?”

“Nice!” Shitty doesn’t answer for a moment, instead pulling a green highlighter from somewhere (Justin isn’t sure where and he doesn’t really want to ask) and highlighting something on the piece of paper. “That’s the lang credit covered, then. How’s the class like? Good? Cruisy? Will he care if I turn up shirtless to class?”

“Oh! Are you going to take French too?” Eric says, smiling. “Uh, it’s not bad? He’s a bit heavy on the melancholy, but we’re getting by fine. Though that might be more thanks to the study group than anything else.” He flushes slightly.

“Coo-li-o,” Shitty says, lengthening each syllable carefully while writing something on the paper. “Is it cool, by the way? If I crash your study group?” He looks at them earnestly. “Like, tell me to fuck off if you want.”

“I’m fine with it,” Justin says before he realises the words are out of his mouth. “I mean. You seem like a good guy. And Eric apparently knows you, and he’s got good taste, so.”

“Aw, thanks!” Eric grins. “S’fine with me too. The more the merrier, you know?”

Adam signs off on it too, and then Shitty has to run to the Dean’s office to sort out his classes– “Since I enrolled, like, _super_ late, but I also let him borrow some of my good crop tops, he gave me some extra time to sign up for classes, and I really needed to finish doing that today, so thanks!”–  and they get started on the homework assignment about ordering food in a restaurant and Eric says, “Do you think I’ll get extra credit if I criticise the chef?”

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

“Dean!” Shitty calls as he barrels into the Dean’s office. “I’ve got– classes organised!”

The Dean slams his laptop shut and looks panicked for a moment. “What? Oh!” he says when he finally properly processes what Shitty said. “Excellent, Mr Knight. I’ll go ahead and get this digitised for you…” He takes the paper from Shitty’s outstretched hand and looks at it for a moment, and then calls for his secretary to enter it into the system and also lock the door for just a moment. Shitty is mildly alarmed.

“Now, Mr Knight,” the Dean says when the room is secured. “We don’t let just _anybody_ enrol as late as you did. Looking at your credentials, I see you put down experience with property and political law, correct?”

“Uh,” Shitty says. “Yes?”

“Oh, fantastic!” crows the Dean. “Now I won’t have to annoy Jeffrey so much for his lawyering services. It puts something of a damper on our friendship, I think.” He sighs wistfully. “But now you’re here! And I’m sure we can come to an agreement on a _trade_ of sorts– your skills in aid of the school in return for me just ignoring how many deadlines you missed.”

“Doesn’t the school have, like, _actual_ lawyers? Who finished their degrees?” Shitty asks. “Not sure how much help a twenty-something dropout is gonna be.”

The Dean shrugs. “Any help we can get is useful. I’m not going to make you do anything _illegal_ , okay, it’s just…” He leans in and says, as if it’s a secret, “Greendale doesn’t exactly have a lot of funding these days. You do a little pro-bono work for us, I’ll subsidise your fees. It’s a win-win!”

Shitty deliberates for a moment. To be honest, he doesn’t actually have that much to lose here, and he _does_ regret not being able to do anything with the inevitable knowledge of law that he’s learned, from excessive exposure to his dad’s experiences with the hedge fund and the subsequent fraud and indictment and incredibly boring court appointments, as well as the year he spent living in the Haus at Samwell and kept it from being formally condemned. He knows he’s smart, and his father hadn’t been quiet about wanting him to attend Harvard Law (as a distant second preference to the Knight tradition of Harvard Business), so it’s well within his abilities to stop Greendale from being bulldozed or sued out of existence.

“Sure,” he says. “Do you have a contract for me to sign?”

As it turns out, the Dean had a contract for _exactly_ this situation (titled _Exchange of Services – Legal Help for School Fees_ ) which makes Shitty wonder how many other students he’s done deals with like this. He signs it SHITTY in block letters.

“Alright!” grins the Dean. “I’ll let you get back to your day, Mr Knight. I’ll be in touch with further details and jobs and all that.”

“Sweet,” Shitty says. “This school is _totally_ living up to my expectations.”

It might be even better than he’d thought.

.

(June, 2013)

“I’m not paying for you to _waste your life_ playing a needlessly violent sport and wearing your hair like a druggie, Bishop!”

“I’m not _wasting my life,_  but I may as well be if I’m sitting here and listening to you trash my school and my friends and my choices, _Father_!”

“Don’t take that _tone_ with me.”

There’s a dangerous tension across the dinner table.

Mind, there’s nearly always some kind of tension in the Knight household, but this feels more precarious than usual. Shitty’s home from Samwell for the summer, which was delegated to his father this year, and it’s been going about as well as he’d expected. He’s been in about twenty heated arguments so far, covering every topic from hockey to his choice in school to privilege to why having long hair is the equivalent of physically spitting on the graves of his forefathers.

“Why is it that when I say something it’s always _in a tone_ , and you’re obviously the _pinnacle of fucking level-headedness_ –” Shitty starts, but his father rises to his feet at the other end of the table and shouts, “LANGUAGE!”

Shitty fumes for a moment– silently, so he doesn’t say anything regrettable, and then he says something regrettable anyway.

“You know, _father_ , if you’re so fed up with everything about me, why the fuck am I even here?” he says, calmly putting down the knife he’d been clutching with white knuckles. “I’m going back to Samwell for the rest of summer. I have keys to the Haus, I can live there– I don’t even know why I _bother_ coming home anymore.”

His father narrows his eyes. “Right, go running back to your safe liberal arts haven. If it weren’t for my _patience_ with this rebellious phase of yours, you wouldn’t even _be_ at that school.” He scoffs. “If it weren’t for my money, you’d be nothing, Bishop.”

“Bullshit!” Shitty cries. “Bull _fucking_ shit, Dad. I don’t need your money, or your name, or your _suggestions_ that my life is worthless unless I march straight into Harvard Business when I’m finished at Samwell so I turn out to be the evil mass-produced Knight male that is apparently the only thing we’re _allowed_ to become!” He stands up while he’s talking and knocks his chair backwards. He hopes it scrapes the fucking parquetry.

“Don’t think I won’t hold you to that,” his father says. “If you don’t apologise to me for this _childish outburst_ right this instant, you’re _gone_. Say goodbye to your tuition, your room in this house, your place in the will.” His voice is serrated, growling over the vowels like some hungry beast. “You wouldn’t last a day without the money this family so graciously allows you.”

“Cut me off, then! Disinherit me! Blast my name from the family tapestry!” Shitty shouts. His father won’t get the Harry Potter reference, but he wouldn’t actually be surprised if they _do_ have a tapestry somewhere dating back generations of Knights upon Knights. “I’m done. I don’t care. I just don’t want to deal with your _goddamn bullshit_ any longer. I’ll make my own fucking way– I’ll work _retail_ , Father, how about that? A Knight taking extra hours at Stop & Shop?”

“Get out.”

Shitty throws the bare essentials into a Samwell Hockey duffel and blinks away angry tears and goes out of his way to knock over every single picture of his father shaking hands with a corrupt politician while he stalks out of the house.

(He looks into the dining room on his way out. His chair is still standing at a harsh angle away from the table. There’s an ugly scratch deep in the varnished hardwood.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

One of the things that Larissa loves about being an artist is seeing things existing in the world that are works of art all their own. Sometimes it’s something cliche like the sunset, or the way the rain hits the light and makes a shimmering rainbow, but in Larissa’s experience, the most common subject for her eyes to lock onto and visualise in paint and pencil is the people around her.

Case in point: this guy in her French class. He walked into the classroom for the first time two weeks late wearing the most garish booty shorts in existence in conjunction with cowboy boots and a button-up with no buttons. His hair is luxurious and usually has a braid or two (never in the same place two days in a row) or flowers in it; his moustache is frequently the same. He’s tanned, lightly muscled but not _built_ , and constantly striking poses that bring to mind Grecian urns.

He’s… certainly something.

Larissa is at Greendale for a reason, and that reason is that they give her free rein in the art rooms in exchange for repainting a wall every now and then. (There’s more to it than that, but that’s reason enough for now.) She’s taken to painting any Greendale student that lets her, simply because of the amazing examples of _character_ exemplified in the school. Among her personal favourites are that guy with the sideburns, a pair of young men who posed in costumes from some old British tv show, and the old Spanish teacher who is now a student. The canvases aren’t displayed anywhere, but just painting them is enough of a reward for Larissa. (It’s a protest against the world that stomped down her dreams of studying fine arts at a fancy school; it shows that she can paint just as well in a shitty backwater community college as under the tutelage of someone with a beret and a pretentious turtleneck. It’s her fighting spirit coming through in the best way.)

So she really wants to paint this guy.

“Hey,” she says after French finishes and her future subject is headed out the door with his friends. (Larissa wouldn’t mind painting them, either; the short blond one could look like an angel with the right lighting, and the two tall ones have a definite chemistry to them that would lend itself well to, oh, gouache, with a heavy-edged texture to the way their arms fall easily around each other’s shoulders– she’s getting ahead of herself. One painting at a time, Larissa.) The boys don’t hear her. “Hey,” she says again, a bit louder, reaching up to tap the long-haired one on the shoulder. “Dude.”

He turns around. “What’s up?” When he talks, his moustache catches the light.

“ _Perfect_ ,” Larissa says. “Can I paint you?”

To his credit, he doesn’t seem too surprised by the question. “Sure,” he replies, tucking an errant strand of hair behind his ear. “Like, now?”

“Are you busy now?” Larissa replies.

“Study group?” one of the tall guys says.

“Oh, shit, yeah,” says moustache. “I gotta study for the test, y’know, so I can’t really pose for much at the moment. Another time, though?”

“Uh–” Larissa starts before she can stop herself. “Could I– come along? Um, to observe you. I’m happy to do some life sketches to get your character down.” _Cool it, Larissa_ , she tells herself. _Keep it calm. Who’s this stuttering mess?_

Moustache turns to his friends, who all nod– the shortest one seems to be the de facto leader, for some reason, and she smiles at that– and grins when he looks at her again. “Sounds sweet, brah. I’m Shitty, by the way,” he says, holding a hand out for her to shake. “Or are you a hugging kinda person? Fist bump? Respectful nod?”

“Larissa,” she replies, fighting a smile. “Let’s start with the handshake and see where we go from there.”

 

Larissa is _enthralled_.

She’s filled up ten pages in her sketchbook with hastily-drawn portraits of these strange men and their even stranger energy. She’d started out just with Shitty, attempting to capture the right expression and angle to convey his enthusiasm, but then she’d seen Eric hiding a smile behind his hand and holding his pen loosely in calloused fingers, large eyes half-closed and crinkled at the corners. That had sparked something in her– the need to capture this softness in graphite, to put her pencil to paper and draw this person so different from his friend, but existing in the same space so easily.

Then her attention had fallen to Justin, and the subtle weight of his shoulders, and how it loosens just a fraction when Adam touches his arm; his eyes, how they flip from wide to narrow to closed in laughter so quickly; the shape of his face, the way he interlaces his fingers. Adam, even, and the contrast of his physique and the way he carries it: somehow tentative, here, like he’s holding himself back for the sake of everyone else; how he taps his glasses down his nose to deliver a joke and then immediately repositions them so he can see properly. All the little quirks under their skin.

So she’s drawing some guys from her French class. No big, right?

Except _yes_ big, because she’s having the time of her life, which she hasn’t experienced through art since the rejection letter from RISD which felt like it spelled doom for her future as an artist. But now there’s art flowing from her pencil like she’s just a conduit for the graphite, as effortless as breathing, and it feels like she’s living again. It feels like she might be able to do something worthwhile with her work again– and that’s amazing

“Amazing,” she says out loud without thinking, apparently loud enough for the four heads bent in conversation and/or study to whip towards her. She blinks and instinctively grabs her sketchbook. “You,” she says after an awkward silence. “You’re amazing. Like, from an artistic perspective? You’re… you’re _mad_ cool to draw. There’s this fucking energy I’m getting, and it’s crazy, and it’s been so long since I haven’t had to, like, force myself to draw?” She becomes acutely aware that she’s breaking her calm and collected veneer by saying more than two sentences at a time and also in an excited voice, and swallows back the enthusiasm for a moment. “It’s just. Really cool.”

“Aww, thanks!” Shitty says. (Larissa thinks the whole ‘Shitty’ thing is half totally metal and half fucking weird, but to each their own.) “Guys, she thinks we’re _cool_.” He reaches across the table to cuff Adam around the head. “Bet that’s a novel sensation, hey, Adda-boy?”

“Fuck off, Shitty,” Adam says, smiling. “Statistically, I’ve been called cool more than any one person in this room.”

“He’s right,” Justin nods. “Excel says so. And spreadsheets don’t lie.” He and Adam share an intricately choreographed handshake. (It’s the fifth one Larissa’s seen so far, and none of them have been the same. She thinks they might be another language altogether.)

Eric snorts. “And how exactly did you graph that, might I ask? Go through every single fan’s tweet since he got drafted and filter for the word ‘cool’?”

“Um, _no_ ,” Justin says, like it’s obvious. “I got data from _one_ season and extrapolated, allowing for the change in fan attitude when he got traded, _Eric_. I know what I’m about.”

“Oh, snap!” Adam crows. “Nerd burn. I mean ‘nerd’ in the best way, Justin, bee tee dubs.”

“I got you, bro, no worries.” Justin grins. Cue another (unique!) handshake.

When there’s a comfortable gap in the ribbing, Larissa asks, “Could I come back and do this again next time?” and drums her fingers on her sketchbook. “Or, just. Study. Hang out. Whatever, you know.”

Everyone looks to Eric, and he shrugs and says, “I don’t see why not. It’d be nice to have someone on the quiet side to balance out these awful rowdy boys.” He smiles sunny at her, and beckons her over to join the table properly from where she’s sitting in a chair, separated.

And so she does. Even if the art is a one-time fluke, the company here is, she supposes, pretty okay as well.

.

(April, 2012)

“Fuck them, Rissa. They’re idiots. They don’t know what they’re missing out on.”

Cindy is really cute when she’s up in arms about something, and usually Larissa would say that, but she’s kind of preoccupied at the moment. She’s staring at the letter from Rhode Island School of Design that starts with the words _We regret to inform you_ and contains the phrase _application has been rejected_ and ends with a falsely sincere _Thank you_ from the admissions board.

“Seriously!” Cindy continues, sitting down next to Larissa on her messy bed and pulling the letter from her hands. “This school just lost the opportunity of a _lifetime_ , and they aren’t worth dwelling on.” She crumples up the rejection letter and its fancy envelope (as well as the rest of the mail that came, but it was probably all junk anyway, so Larissa doesn’t protest) and throws it across the room into the bin. It makes a satisfying noise when it impacts the metal, like someone putting their foot down and saying _enough_ ; Larissa blinks and nods absently.

“Yeah,” she says. “Shit. Do you want to go get high with Jordan and forget about college for a while?” Cindy grins and leans down to peck Larissa on the lips and pulls her up by the wrist, all in a fluid movement like smoke twirling.

Getting high with Jordan is usually a pretty fun time; it’s a way to kill a few hours and sit in languid silence, not thinking about the stress carried in a letter addressed to Miss Larissa Duan from the board of admissions of whatever fancy school she might have dreamed of attending. Larissa floats for a bit. Cindy’s foot is kind of digging into her back, but that’s fine.

“ _Fuck_ college,” she says out of nowhere, about an hour or so into the relaxing haze.

“Right on,” Jordan agrees, raising his fist.

“I should just– you know, I’m a goddamn _artist_?” Larissa continues, sitting up. She’s not _super_ high; just enough that the edge of everything is blurred and things seem generally like they’ll work out if she tries hard enough. “I don’t need to go to _school_. I can live life on my _own_ terms. I can… fuck, who even cares, I’ll figure it out.”

“Course you will, babe.” Cindy shifts slightly so she’s on her side and facing Larissa. “What’s this you’re– you’re doing?”

“Gonna go full art kid and– shit, I dunno.” She pauses. “Go on a road trip? No, wait, let’s go to R– uh, RISD? RS...ID. The assholes who rejected me. Go to them, and then, like, _break_ something.”

“Hells yeah,” Jordan agrees.

Larissa tries her damn hardest to turn the torn-up parts of her insides into anger at the world and succeeds, mostly. She’ll go piss on some important art installation at RISD with Cindy, and then they can road trip across the country and get paid to make art and live free and not worry and have a good time.

It’s fine. Rejection letters aren’t the end of the world.

 

But the thing about rejection letters is that some people don’t get them. Cindy certainly doesn’t.

“Babe,” she says, brow creased. “It’s in Cali, and I’ve– I didn’t think I’d get in, but I got a _scholarship_ , and it’s too good for me to pass up–”

“It’s fine,” Larissa says. It’s good that back when they got together they both said, clearly, that neither of them were looking for something in the way of forever. It still stings a bit.

(She still goes and kicks a piece of art at RISD and drives across the country, but it’s a lot lonelier than she’d expected it to be. A few companies and private clients hire her to do art; sculptures and paintings and a few personal portraits here and there. Enough to pay for a place to stay in whichever town she’s in at the moment, not enough to make her feel like her art is actually worth it.

And another thing about rejection letters: getting one from one school doesn’t preclude the possibility of an acceptance letter from another.

Larissa never sees the envelope from Samwell University addressed to her containing the words _We’re pleased to inform you_ , and she never really gives the college itself much of a second thought.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

“Is it true that Jack Zimmermann goes to this school?” Justin asks one day while they’re studying, apropos of nothing.

“Who?” says Larissa.

“Oh my god, Larissa,” Adam gasps. “I can’t believe you’re in the hockey boy study group and you don’t know who _Jack Zimmermann_ is.”

“He’s only the most famous hockey player since, like, his _dad_ ,” says Justin. “Everyone who has ever touched a hockey puck knows who Jack Zimmermann is.”

“He got a bit more widespread exposure after he came out earlier this year,” Eric says, rolling his eyes at Justin and Adam’s shocked outrage. “Did it in a press conference out of the blue and then dropped off the face of the earth. For the second time in his career, no less.” He pauses. “The disappearing, that is. Not coming out. Don’t know how effective that’d be.”

“I’ve heard people saying they’ve seen him around the school, but, like?” Justin says. “ _Here_? Why would he turn up here?”

“Who knows?” Adam replies. “There hasn’t been anything from the media, so I’m assuming the Pens management put down a pretty hard embargo on anything Jack Zimmermann-adjacent, and, like?” He shrugs. “Why not? Greendale seems like a pretty good place to lie low. There’s so much weird shit happening here that nobody would really expect it.”

“It’s true, by the way,” Shitty says. “I’ve seen him. He asked me for the time, once. It was like seeing a cryptid.”

“Oh, is that the Canadian guy who wears the yellow sneakers?” Larissa asks, eyebrows raised in comprehension. “We have a class together.”

Everyone gasps. “What is he like in real life?” Justin asks, wide-eyed. “He looks terrifying.”

Larissa thinks for a moment, and then she says, “He’s a nerd, is my educated guess. He’s quiet in class– I forget what it’s called, but it’s something like ‘The Art of the World Wars’? Like, what the art climate was like during wartime. They got a specialist in for this semester, so it’s, like, actually well-taught. Anyway, Zimmermann never really says much, but when he _does_ put his hand up he _really_ knows what he’s talking about. I never would have pegged him for the jock-type.”

“Oh my god, Jack Zimmermann is a _nerd_ ,” Adam says. “I mean, I’ve played against him a couple times, but on the ice he’s like… the Terminator. But for hockey.”

“I’m making it my mission to befriend him,” Shitty says. “He always looks either super sad or really cranky, and nobody deserves to live like that, even a Greendale student.” He taps his chin in deep thought. “What do you think his stance is on banter with the lads?”

 

Over the next few weeks, Shitty makes good on his promise– he sure does try his best to get into Jack Zimmermann’s good books. The problem is that Shitty’s particular brand of friendship consists of a lot of nicknames, crass jokes, and loudness, and that doesn’t seem to be very compatible with Jack Zimmermann.

Outside the library: “Jay-Z! What’s up, man?”

Response: Unsettled glare, five seconds of silence and a terse nod.

In the cafeteria: “Zimmo, how’s it hanging? What are you eating there, uh, mashed potatoes?”

Response: “Yes.” Annoyed glare, drawing-in of shoulders.

While the Spanish study group is doing _something_ : “How weird are these fuckers, right, Jay-Jay?”

Response: Record-setting ten-second unamused glare, eyebrow raise. “Weird. Right.”

And so on. To his credit, Shitty isn’t discouraged; Jack never expressly told him to go away, and his body language seems more reserved than outwardly resentful of the attempts at friendship, so he doesn’t think he’s being too much of an asshole.

“I really want to invite him to study group,” Shitty says one day, at study group, instead of studying. “I just get the feeling that I’m meant to be his friend, y’know? Right down in my gut. All pulling and aching.” And he _does_. It’s an insistent feeling in his stomach that feels like the dictionary definition of _yearning_. It’s the same feeling he gets when he thinks about Samwell, and the fact that he missed going to school with Eric (for half a year, but maybe if he was there in the first place it could have been longer). He wants to fix it. He wants to see Jack Zimmermann happy.

“You should get that checked out,” says Eric. “Apparently there’s something going around.”

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Of all places, it’s underneath the school flag where Shitty finally sees Jack Zimmermann laugh.

He’s standing there gazing up at the sky-blue material fluttering rather pathetically in the breeze, looking for all the world like a statue (though a far more flattering and accurately-coloured one than the bronze effigy of Luis Guzman that watches them all walk to class every morning), and Shitty stops dead on his way to his Intro to Philosophising class when he sees him. Jack always looks tense and wound tight, but for some reason, his shoulders are remarkably loose, his stance fixed but not strained. Shitty takes it upon himself to investigate.

“Jackie-O!” he calls from a few yards away, jogging to the flagpole. “What’s up, brah?”

Normally, a nickname like that would have called for at least a five-second glare, but Jack doesn’t even look down. For a moment Shitty thinks he didn’t hear him, but then he says, voice shaking, “Do you think the Dean _knows_?” It sounds like he’s about to cry.

Shitty frowns. Everyone has _some_ idea of Jack Zimmermann’s fraught relationship with mental illness and medication, and without any context it sounds like this flag-gazing session is a prelude to an anxiety attack. “Does the Dean know about what?” he says, edging closer to Jack and chancing a look at his face. It’s stoic as always, his line of sight unchanging– but there’s one lone trembling muscle in his jaw. “I’m sure whatever the problem is, he’d be happy to help. He’s a pretty cool dude.”

“No,” says Jack, as if Shitty hadn’t even spoken, “he _can’t_ know. He– he’s put it right out in the open for everyone to see. Oh my god.”

Yeah, Shitty is lost. He feels like maybe Jack is just doing some sort of monologue. Soliloquy. Thing. “What?” he asks. “Jack.” He goes as far as to snap his fingers in front of Jack’s face. “ _Zimmermann_. You alright?”

Jack doesn’t move for a long few seconds, and then he raises one arm to point up at the flag. “ _That_ ,” he says, as if it explains anything at all. Squinting, Shitty follows the line of his gesture up to the flag– that’s right, the Dean had announced a new flag and motto at the welcome ceremony, right? Shit, is it unintentionally bigoted? _Intentionally_ bigoted? He prepares himself for the worst, and then a breath of wind billows the flag so he can see the logo on the front, and it’s–

“Holy _shit_ , that’s a fucking butthole!” Shitty cries, and then _Jack fucking Zimmermann_ bends his head and honest-to-god _laughs_. It’s a very Canadian laugh, low and rounded and apologetic, but it’s a laugh.

“The– the Latin, it’s,” pause for a soft laugh, and the quiver in his voice is full-blown now, “it’s meant to be _e pluribus unum_ – out of many, one– but they–”

“ _E pluribus_ _anus_ ,” reads Shitty. “Out of many buttholes?”

And that makes Jack laugh again, and the corner of his mouth stays caught up on his cheek in a real smile. “The Dean said it’s meant to represent the crossroads of education or something,” he says. “It was an anonymous submission and it won the new flag contest. I can’t– this _school_.”

“This school,” Shitty agrees, and he experimentally claps Jack on the shoulder when he turns to get to his class, and Jack doesn’t shy away from the contact.

A few steps away, Shitty stops, and thinks for a moment, and bites his lip. He turns around. Jack is still smiling up at the flag.

“Hey, Jack,” says Shitty, tentatively. Jack looks at him, and his eyes say _go away_ but the ghost of his smile says _I’m listening_. Shitty thinks it might just be the way his face is. “Did you maybe want to come hang out with me and my study group? Like, no pressure, but. We’re studying French, and you could probably teach us way better than the staff at this school, right?”

The smile disappears. Shitty curses his impulsivity.

“And I, uh, you seem like a really cool guy, and I swear this isn’t just, like, me trying to take advantage of you for the sake of a class?” Shitty says quickly. “We honestly– would love to, like, hang out, get to know you. It’s a friendship thing. Um, so, we meet in the library today after lunch, so you can just, y’know, turn up? Or not! Not saying you have to be there. Just… think about it, okay?” He shuts his overactive mouth with an audible click and thinks about all the ways that could have gone better.

For a moment it looks like Jack is about to hit him, but then his broad shoulders relax just a fraction and he nods. “Cool,” he says. “Uh, sure. Whereabouts in the library?”

At first, judging from Jack’s stony face and neutral tone, Shitty thinks it’s a polite refusal, but then the actual words catch up with him. “Oh! Oh, you know the group study rooms?” he says, grinning. “We’re in room C. It’s, like, near that weird-ass section with all the biographies of Steve Irwin?”

(Nobody pretends to know how the Greendale Library works. The whole shelf adjacent to the study room is filled with dozens of copies of _Wildlife Warrior: Steve Irwin: 1962 - 2006, A Man Who Changed the World_ and none of them have been checked out in years. People say they’re cursed.)

“Yeah, I know the one you mean,” Jack says. “See you later, uh– is Shitty your real name?”

“As real as it gets,” says Shitty. “You’ll get used to it.”

And there’s the Zimmermann smile again. “See you later, Shitty.” Jack walks off in the opposite direction and leaves Shitty thrilling at the fact that he’s started to melt away _Jack Zimmermann’s_ icy shell.

God _damn_.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Adam might need to get a new prescription. He’s taken his glasses off and cleaned them twice and he’s still not seeing any clearer.

Jack Zimmermann is still sitting in their study room.

“What’s the holdup?” Shitty says from behind him. Adam flinches; he hadn’t heard Shitty coming at all. The man has a freakish ability to sneak up on people accidentally.

“Why is _Jack Zimmermann_ in our study room?” Adam hisses. “Oh my god, I can’t just ask him to _leave_. Do you think he remembers the time I checked him in that game back in 2012?”

“He’s there because… I invited him?” Shitty replies, confused. “Didn’t you say it was cool for him to come hang out with us sometime?”

“I didn’t think– you’d actually _ask him about it_!” Adam chokes out. “I thought that was, like, hypothetical! How was I supposed to know that Jack Zimmermann would actually say _yes_ and come hang out with us?”

Shitty shrugs. “What’s done is done.” He fixes Adam with an intense stare. “Don’t be a dick to him, okay? He’s a cool dude, once you get past the constant frowning. And I said you’d all be nice. So. Don’t make a liar of me, Adam Birkholtz.” He says it with the same intonation Adam says Jack Zimmermann’s name, which makes the corner of Adam’s mouth twitch in a smile, and walks into the study room.

See, Adam doesn’t _really_ count as an NHL celebrity. He had his two years in the sun with the Bruins, and then the Avalanche had pretty much shut down any chance of him becoming well-known outside diehard fans. And nobody in the group makes much mention of the fact that he’s played nationally, outside of chirping him about his lack of coordination.

But _Jack Zimmermann_. He’s an actual fucking famous person, and he’s going to their school, and he’s in their study room, and it’s… some kind of weird for Adam. Because even though he’s not _famous_ -famous, it’s still part of his identity. And Jack Zimmermann seems like a bit of a dick, but if he slots into their fledgling friend group, it might end up that one well-known person is enough; it might end up that the big hockey player seat is pulled from under him and offered to Zimmermann instead, and then where will Adam be? Just be some loser taking classes at a shitty community college and slowly shrivelling away into a handsome husk.

(Stop being so dramatic, you might ask? Why on earth would he ever do that?)

He’s not a total asshole, though, so he just shrugs his broad shoulders and waits for Justin to get there, because he doesn’t really feel like going in there alone. Justin is prompt and on time, like always, coming around the corner with a smile. They share a fistbump outside the study room door. Adam’s heart isn’t really in it.

“What’s up, dude?” Justin says, opening the door.

“Oh, just–” Adam starts to say, but he’s interrupted by Justin gasping and halfway falling through the doorway, because, yeah, Jack Zimmermann is in there. He sighs.

“Oh my god,” gasps Justin. “I’m– you’re Jack Zimmermann.” Jack Zimmermann looks a bit uncomfortable and nods. “Oh my god. _Huge_ fan. Sorry. I’m Justin. Sorry, I swear I’m not usually this embarrassing. _Sorry_.”

Adam rolls his eyes, coming up behind Justin to put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “That’s a lie, bro,” he says. “You’re always exactly this embarrassing.” He stretches his other hand out for Jack Zimmermann to shake, and does his best to keep any sarcasm or venom out of his voice when he says, “Hey, man. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but we’ve actually–”

“Birkholtz, right?” Zimmermann says, in a monotone voice. “I– euh, sorry. I remember. Bruins? You _did_ break my nose once.” Adam bristles for a moment, then he notes the distinct lack of anger or annoyance in Zimmermann’s tone, and realises he’s not claiming any sort of grudge; rather, there’s a hint of humour threaded through the words. His handshake is firm, but not enough to break any fingers, so there’s that, too.

“Weird how we both ended up here, though, right?” he replies, which makes something in Zimmermann’s eyes go hard, and he drops Adam’s hand.

“Weird,” Zimmermann agrees, and he doesn’t look at Adam again.

“Sorry about them,” Shitty says. “They’re idiots. Oh, shit, here comes the _real_ MVPs!” He says that while Larissa and Eric walk into the room, linked at the elbow, laughing behind their hands and clutching pumpkin spice lattes like the faux-hipsters they are. Eric’s eyes go comically wide when he sees Jack Zimmermann in the usually empty seat next to Shitty. Larissa lifts her chin in greeting.

“Oh my lord, Jack _Zimmermann_?” Eric says. “I was not expecting this. Shitty, you gotta warn me if you’re bringing a celebrity into our midst! I’m not wearing my good cologne!” He grins good-naturedly. Zimmermann looks overwhelmed. “Eric Bittle. Nice to meet you!”

“How am I the only one who totally fucking _embarrassed himself_ meeting Jack Zimmermann?” Justin says, holding his head in his hands. “Also, Eric, you’re a goddamn traitor. I can’t believe you got PSLs with Larissa and not _me_.”

“It’s fine, man,” Zimmermann says after shaking Eric’s hand. “I’ve… gotten a lot worse. I mean. You didn’t ask me to sign your body, so you’re not _that_ bad.” He smiles, which should probably look weird on a face that Adam has only ever seen scowling or grimacing or in a vaguely celebratory neutral expression, but it’s a nice smile, which makes Adam really annoyed for some reason.

He kind of _wants_ to hate Zimmermann, is the thing. He seems like a bit of a jerk, and he’s cold, and everything about him screams entitled NHL prodigy, except for the part where he came out and denounced the NHL for being one of the worst places to be gay and mentally ill. (Adam likes that part.) But the point stands: Adam is one for friendship, and Jack Zimmermann doesn’t really seem like someone who’s super big on having casual fun or lightening up.

So go on, Zimmermann. Prove him wrong.

Introductions drag on because Justin wants to hear all of Zimmermann’s funniest-slash-worst fan encounters, and Adam finds himself reluctantly smiling at some of them (mostly the mashed potatoes one), and apparently Shitty is always fucking right: Jack Zimmermann isn’t the worst person on earth to have in their study group. He’s quiet, but not as icy as Adam had first expected; maybe he just needs to defrost for a bit. Justin seems enamored, though, which makes Adam immediately more sympathetic. He’s not going to be a total dick to a guy his best friend thinks is amazing; he has an amazing amount of faith in Justin’s judgement.

“Anyway, I _did_ text you asking if you wanted to go to Starbucks, Justin,” Eric says, settling into the seat opposite Shitty. “Don’t complain about not being invited to things when I _clearly_ sent you a message asking if you want to get coffee. With three emojis.”

“Dude, I had lab!” cries Justin. He pulls out his phone and groans. “I had to put my phone on silent and I missed _PSLs_. Fuck my whole life.”

“What’s a PSL?” asks Jack Zimmermann.

The group spends about two seconds in deliberation over the right course of action before settling on _merciless chirping_.

“Dude, do they not have Starbucks in Canada?” Shitty says.

“That’s slander,” Justin shoots back. “They have Starbucks in the parts of Canada that _don’t live under a rock_.”

Eric laughs, but says, “Be _nice_! Lord, you awful boys. Jack, a PSL is a pumpkin spice latte. It’s a coffee from Starbucks you can get during fall, and it’s got whipped cream on it, and it’s the only good way to drink coffee.”

“Oh, okay,” says Zimmermann. “I’m pretty sure there’s a point where a drink stops being coffee and starts being sugar and milk, though.”

Nobody says anything.

“Oh my god,” Adam says. “Did you just _make a joke_?”

Jack just smiles at him, and then everyone goes wild as only hockey and hockey-adjacent people can.

(To be fair, Adam _did_ ask to be proven wrong.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

So here’s a totally not-shocking fact: Greendale sucks total ass.

Shitty’s aware of this. Hell, it’s why he came here, mostly; still, though, it’s kind of incredible how the school continuously finds new and unique ways to amaze him.

“Dean,” he says one day, striding into the Dean’s office with a stack of papers. “Is this bullshit, or does the school actually own a residential block next to the campus?”

“Shoot!” the Dean says. “I usually get those routed through the upper-level lawyers. Um, I mean– technically?” He hovers a hand near his head in that odd gesture of hesitance he has, and then reaches out to take the papers from Shitty. “We try not to make it public knowledge, though.”

“Why not?” Shitty frowns. He takes the seat in front of the desk and sits in a very gangly manner.

“Hm,” the Dean hums. “I can trust you, right?” Nodding seems like the right response here. Shuffling the papers into a neater pile and setting them aside, he leans in; Shitty mirrors him. “So, a few years ago, it got leaked that City College was planning on opening its very own frat row. Y’know, to make it seem more like a _real_ college?” He splays his fingers on the word ‘real’ and rolls his eyes. “And, of course, if City College gets even the tiniest bit closer to being a real college, Greendale is left in the dust! So _obviously_ I immediately bought the street behind campus, to beat Dean Spreck at his own game.” Here he looks guilty and shifts his gaze to over Shitty’s shoulder. “But, uh. It turns out that Spreck had _actually_ been leaking that information directly to me? ...Specifically to make me waste money on beating him? So they announced a new wing to their library, named it after some boring old guy who died, and gave this stupid press release about how the differences between community college and universities should be celebrated, and community college doesn’t need all the trappings of a fancy school. So there I am with a half-demolished street of houses, and I _obviously_ can’t just tell everyone that I’m opening frat row after _that_! And, uh, nobody wants to buy land from Greendale– they think we’re cursed, you know– so…” His sentence trails off.

Shitty almost wants to laugh, but he feels like that would be rude.

“So you just… never told anyone?” he says. “Nobody asked about the fucking condemned houses behind the school?”

“Nobody asked!” the Dean replies, throwing his hands up. “I was _going_ to tell someone, but then it was a year later, and it just felt so awkward. But we’ve been in talks to demolish the last few standing houses so that _maybe_ we can do _something_ with the land, but even that’s going to cost us money… I wish I could just forget about it.” He sighs and shoves the papers to the side of his desk. “Being a Dean is so boring. I like it better when I can just ask Jeffrey and his study group what they’re up to and do _that_ for a day.”

An idea sparks behind Shitty’s eyes. “So if _someone_ were to, say, take over ownership of one of the houses…” he suggests, raising his eyebrows. “Let someone else take care of the upkeep– plus you can frame it as an act of charity, you know? Offer it as residential space for someone in need? _That_ would be good press.” He points both thumbs at his chest.

So at the moment he’s living and working in the youth hostel in the city. Working the desk and some minor maintenance brings the cost of living down to something he can handle with a low-stress retail job, which is nice, but how much nicer would it be if he could live in his very own _house_? Granted, it’s sure to be a bit of a shit-show, but there’s nothing a little elbow grease and some tender loving car can’t handle.

Plus– and he can’t pretend this isn’t actually the major driving force behind this decision– the concept of living in a run-down frat house is striking the part of his heart that misses Samwell something fierce. Sure, it wouldn’t be the actual Haus, but it would be _something_.

“But who’s going to want to live in a place like that? And on Greendale property, no less?” the Dean says piteously. “It’s a good idea, Mr Knight, but it’s all moot anyway unless some poor soul is in bad enough shape to want to be part of it.”

Shitty blinks at him. “I meant _me_ ,” he says. “Was that not clear?” His thumbs are still directed at the middle of his chest. He wiggles them.

“Oh!” says the Dean. “ _Oh_. Oh, I mean. If you really want to?” He pauses and frowns at Shitty. “Are you _sure_ you want to? This isn’t some roundabout way of cashing in on insurance, or suing us, or trying to cancel out a curse?”

“Nope,” grins Shitty.

Paperwork is sorted out in short order, and the Dean gives him a few more wary looks, but for the most part, Shitty is _ecstatic_. If only his father could see him now.

 

The next day, he strides confidently into the study room and shouts, “I have a house!” Everyone applauds, a bit bemusedly. “You’re welcome to come over and hang as soon as all the asbestos is out.”

Eric goggles at him. “Shitty, do you really think you should be living somewhere with _asbestos_ in the walls?”

“Oh, it’s in the roof as well,” Shitty says. “And the floor. And some of the kitchen cabinets?” He waves a hand dismissively. “Anyway, it won’t be in any of those places for much longer! And when that’s all sorted, Haus Zwei Point Oh is open for business!”

“...German?” Justin says.

“It’s a thing,” Shitty explains. “From Samwell. _Best_ school in these states, and home of the _best_ frat house I’ve ever had the privilege of living in. It was called the Haus, right? I don’t fucking know why, but it’s the Haus, and _this_ place is kind of like the spiritual successor, so it’s version 2.0! Or _Zwei_.0.”

There’s silence for a moment, like everybody is gathering strength for a chirp at the exact same time.

“Haus 2: The Hausening,” says Adam.

“Haus 2: Electric Boogaloo!” is the contribution from Larissa.

“Haus 2: Haus Harder?” Jack says uncertainly.

“Shitty Knight and the Frat Haus of Secrets!” Eric interjects.

Shitty grins. God, he loves his friends.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

There’s a crowd in the cafeteria.

This, in and of itself, isn’t actually unusual. What is unusual is that there’s no meal event, food fight, Heterosexual Nonsense™, paintball standoff, or protest that seems to be the source of the crowd. Eric brushes his hands off and uncertainly unties his apron. He’s just put a pie into the oven; he’s free to go investigate if he wants to. The kitchen is seeming pretty safe right now, but he is curious about what’s happening.

He skirts around the edge of the throng, searching for someone he knows and trying to see what’s at the centre that is apparently so interesting. Shitty is there (like he is at nearly every vaguely interesting thing that happens at this school), leaning on Larissa’s shoulder, craning his neck to watch the spectacle; really, though, that could just be Shitty being high and thinking something like a goose is fucking _enthralling_.

“Hey, guys,” he says, coming up behind the two of them. “What’s happening?”

“Shh!” Shitty hisses. “We’re _experiencing a movie_.”

“One of the guys from the other study group is making a pseudo-religious documentary and this is a Q&A session,” Larissa says, over Shitty’s wide-eyed hushing.

Shoot. “I’d heard people talking about this,” Eric says. “I’ve never really understood high film.”

“Ha!” Shitty laughs. “ _High_.”

A gap opens up in the crowd so Eric can see the figure at the centre, and sure enough, it’s Abed; he’s wearing robes and has long hair and Eric shakes away the brief thought that he looks _really_ good. Everyone is looking at him kind of reverently.

“Abed!” says someone. Eric thinks it’s Star-Burns, but he can’t actually see from where he is. “Are we all in the movie right now?”

“We are all in _a_ movie,” Abed says in that all-knowing voice of his, “even when there are no cameras.”

“When will the movie be released?” asks Chang.

Abed turns and fixes him with an intense stare. “When is _life_ released?” he says evenly. “Every minute of our lives is a world premiere, and my father’s already bought the popcorn.” Everyone _ohh_ s at that, when he looks up at the ceiling.

Eric suggests they hightail it when Abed’s study buddy appears, because more than two members of the Spanish study group in one room spells doom; Shitty agrees, but only because he’s distracted by some tangent he’s talking about, and he’s in that pliant and agreeable state he gets in when he’s high. (Which is, to be fair, a fair percentage of the time.)

“No, Eric, listen!” he says when they’re back in the kitchen and out of the potential peripheral drama. Shitty hoists himself up onto the counter and Larissa sits next to him, kicking her legs. “Have you been listening to all the shit he’s said about, like, _life_ being a movie, and, uh, being the director of your own story?”

“Yes, Shitty,” Eric replies. “It’s hard _not_ to hear it. There’s posters all over the school.”

“Does it _remind_ you of anyone?” Shitty implores. He’s leaning heavily on Larissa, but she doesn’t seem fazed.

Eric thinks. “You, when you come back from Philosophy class really stoned?” he guesses.

“No! Dude!” Shitty waves his arms and makes a complicated gesture. “You know?”

Squinting doesn’t make the gesture any clearer. “Shitty, hun, I have no idea who or what you’re talking about,” he says, before turning to check on the pie.

“Am I not making an S?” Shitty says. “Larissa, confirm. S?” He pivots so he’s facing Larissa and repeats the action. It involves his arms going in wildly different directions and looks more like an uppercase N than anything else.

“Close enough,” Larissa says. “You tried, and that’s what counts.”

“S for Samwell!” says Shitty, and makes the supposed S sign again. “Okay, but you knew Johnson, right? You were _on_ the team. You _had_ to know that weird motherfucker.”

For a moment Eric tenses up at the thought of the Samwell hockey team, but then he blinks and says, “Oh my _god_ , you’re so right. He’s exactly like Johnson.”

“Fuck yeah!” Shitty says, grinning. “Larissa, Johnson was the goalie on our team, right? And goalies, they’re _always_ weird. But Johnson was uber-weird. He was always saying stuff about ‘the narrative’ and ‘character arcs’ and ‘transformative works’. Raved _on_ about his favourite comics.”

“It’s weird that I didn’t really remember this until now,” Eric says, “but one time he pulled me aside and said he hoped this alternate universe had a happy ending? Which, in retrospect, is not the strangest thing he said.”

“He always went on about canon,” Shitty says. “Damn, I miss that weird dude.”

“Maybe Abed is just the Johnson of Greendale,” Larissa posits.

Wherever Johnson is, Eric finds himself hoping he’s doing well.

(“You’ll be fine, Bittle,” Johnson said to him once. “You’re always the main character. Transformative works usually try to keep the fan favourites decently happy.”

“Sorry?” Eric had replied.

“Don’t worry about it.” Johnson had smiled in that calm and assured way of his and looked out the window. “It’s a different format, but you’ll take to fic pretty easy, I think. Just have fun with it.”

“Um, okay.” Most of the team’s advice re: Johnson was just to go along with what he said, which Eric took to heart.

“This’ll make a great flashback, I think. Nice transition into the next part of your story. Remember me fondly, Bittle, okay?”

“Sure thing, Johnson.”)

Weird guy. Eric remembers him fondly.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

_ii. somebody said, “be what you’ll be,” / we could be old and cold and dead on the sea_

Halloween is Eric’s favourite time of the year. It’s got everything– holiday-themed pastries, costumes, and babies dressed as pumpkins. It’s a time for dressing up and having a good time at the school-sanctioned dance, and it’s a time for absolutely _letting loose_ to ABBA.

(His music taste can’t be _all_ Bey and Bey-adjacent. Who hasn’t got room for a little 70s Swedish pop in their heart? Monsters, that’s who.)

He’s waiting outside the library for the rest of the group to arrive, nudging his sunglasses back up onto his head where they’ve started to fall down over his eyes. In all honesty, he’s exceedingly proud of his costume: Marty McFly, from the first Back to the Future movie, red puffy vest and all. He even got period-accurate Nikes.

Yes, he loves Halloween. Yes, he wants to do it _right_.

His phone buzzes with a text.

==FRENCH STUDY GROUP (AKA THE STEVE IRWIN FAN CLUB)==

Today at 8:24 p.m.

**LD** : we still meeting outside the library?

**EB** : Yep!

**SK** : i might be a bit late lol cant find my pants

**LD** : did you look in the oven shits

**SK** : LARISSA DUAN LIFE SAVER

**JO** : adam and i just pulled up we’ll be there in a sec eric

**EB** : Awesome! Just waiting on Jack, then.

**JZ** : Hah. Turn around, Eric.

 

Eric turns around so quickly he nearly falls over. Jack is standing behind him, holding his phone in one hand, the other hand held up in a wave; he’s wearing a black shirt and jeans, as well as what looks like a headband with pointed ears and some lines of makeup on his face. It’s too dark to really make out the details properly until Jack steps closer, and then Eric does something between a gasp and a laugh, and says, “Lord, you’re a cat!”

“Yes,” Jack says. He points to the drawn-on nose and whiskers. “Larissa lent me her eyeliner. And you’re…” He pauses and squints at Eric’s costume.

“ _Really_ , Jack?” Eric says, rolling his eyes theatrically. “It’s a classic movie, even _you_ should have seen it at some point in your life.”

Jack just shrugs and gives a lazy smile.

“I’m Marty! Marty McFly!” explains Eric. “Back to the Future? Michael J. Fox? Christopher Lloyd? The _Delorean_ , for goodness sake?”

The smile on Jack’s face grows and trembles, and Eric realises he’s being played. “So where’s your hoverboard, then?” Jack asks, like the absolute asshole he is. He laughs, and it makes his whiskers twitch.

“Jack _Zimmermann_!” cries Eric, but the rest of his huffy tirade is cut off by the arrival of Larissa and Shitty, who Eric had heard were planning on a matching costume; knowing the fact doesn’t really make it much easier to parse the sight he sees, though.

Shitty is wearing a white sphere on his torso over white tights and a long-sleeved shirt, which is alarming mostly because that’s the most skin Eric has ever seen him willingly cover. The white ball has some sort of red painted shape on the front. It’s baffling.

Larissa, on the other hand, has a ratty-looking wig that doubles as a fake beard cascading down her chest, as well as a sports bra and something between a skirt and a loincloth. She looks dishevelled, with fake scars and dirt smudged across her bare skin; the cherry on the cake is the box with a large Fed-Ex label wedged under her arm. The box is what finally tips the scale of comprehension.

“Oh my god!” Eric grins. “ _Cast Away_! That is _so good_ , y’all, I cannot believe it. Though I would have pegged Shitty as the one to go mostly-naked?”

“Anything for an excuse to yell ‘Wilson’ at the top of my lungs, Eric,” Larissa says. “Also, styling this wig was so much fun.”

“I’m a volleyball!” Shitty adds.

“Nice cat getup, Jack,” Larissa says. “The eyeliner went to a good cause.”

None of them really want to go in until Adam and Justin get there, because it looks frankly _hectic_ in there, and they at least want to spend a few seconds together before getting separated in the sweaty crowd, but it’s been two minutes since Justin said they’d be there “in a sec”, and Eric is about to start worrying when he sees a disjointed horse careen around the corner.

“Oh, Lord,” he says.

Sure enough, it’s Adam and Justin in a store-bought palomino getup. Eric can tell because the horse is falling apart from the speed of their approach, and Adam’s head and shoulders are visible in the gap between the two halves.

“Sorry!” Justin yells when they finally reach the rest of the group. Adam seems to give the cohesive horse shape up as a lost cause and stands next to him instead. “Adam’s big horse ass got stuck in the car.”

“ _Your_ big horse ass got stuck in the car,” Adam retorts, rolling his eyes. “Now who’s ready to get Halloweeny up in this shit?”

 

The party is something approaching a rager, according to Shitty, who has an intimate knowledge of party categorisation. There’s a lot of people dancing, a lot of people eating, and a _lot_ of ABBA playing.

Also some voice memos that the Dean apparently left on his playlist. Which, yeah, par for the course for a Dean-organised dance.

“This taco meat is something else!” Adam shouts over the din. For about ten minutes he’d tried to be the butt of a horse, but that’s really not conducive to dancing, eating, or talking, so he and Justin are now dressed as two horrifying half-horses. He holds up a paper plate of meat and Eric squints at it.

Personally, Eric is innately suspicious of any food offered at Greendale events that he didn’t have a hand in making, so he hasn’t actually had any of the food on offer, but the general reviews seem to be positive, so maybe he’ll break his rule in the spirit of the season.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone throw up in the corner. Maybe not.

“Oh, _sick_ ,” Larissa says. The person who threw up staggers away into the crowd.

A chill runs up Eric’s spine. He turns to Jack and says, “I think I might head out, actually? This ain’t as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Also, uh, seems there’s some food poisoning heading around?”

Jack, leaning in to hear Eric talk over the music, nods. “I’ll walk you to your dorm, if you like. I’ll just let the others know we’re leaving.”

“Oh!” Eric says. “You don’t have to come with, Jack, it’s fine. I can make it to my dorm.”

“I was thinking about going too,” says Jack. “And I really don’t mind. Don’t want you getting stuck in the future, eh?”

Laughing and shaking his head in faux exasperation, Eric turns to Larissa and taps her on the shoulder. “Me and Jack are fixing to leave,” he says. “Sorry we aren’t staying. Where did Shitty go? And– Jesus, I turned away for, like, five seconds, where are Adam and Justin?”

Larissa shrugs. “I think Adam went to go ralph in the corner. Justin, too. Something is _up_ with that taco meat, though.” She looks around the room, which is kind of a pointless endeavour, considering she’s 5’1 and can’t see the top of anyone’s head. “Dunno about Shits, though. Take A Chance On Me came on and he was tearing it the _fuck_ up.”

“I’ve just got a… bad feeling, is all,” Eric says. “I’m gonna go find Adam and Justin and see if they’re alright.” He looks over his shoulder to check that Jack is still there (he is, thankfully) and sets off through the crowd, searching for either half of a horse.

(Behind them, Larissa gleefully shouts out “WILSON!” at the top of her lungs.)

There’s a few intermittent yells and groans and screams, and a few people are stumbling around looking high as all get out, but this isn’t his first rodeo. His first Greendale dance, as it were. These things usually end in some form of disaster. He just can’t shake the feeling that this disaster will be worse than the usual.

“Over there,” Jack says after a few minutes of ABBA-backed looking. There’s an area where a few people seem to be sitting down, slumped against the wall and looking generally really fucked up. Eric frowns. His food poisoning sense was right.

“Justin!” he calls, spotting a horse’s head rising above the swell of sick people. Jack shoulders aside a few people in the way and guides Eric through with a hand on the small of his back, which definitely doesn’t make Eric go red. (Thank the stars for dim party lighting, though.)

After some careful maneuvering, Jack and Eric reach them, and Eric says, admonishingly, “Boys! You should know by now not to trust Greendale food!”

They don’t say anything. Not even Adam, which is concerning, because usually he’s full of quips and various noises; Eric’s frown turns worried, and he crouches down slightly to look Adam in the eyes where he’s hunched over on the seat next to Justin, looking pale and ill and ready to puke his guts up, and Eric reaches out a hand to touch him on the shoulder and then Adam and Justin move in tandem to grab his arm and their heads bend down–

Something burns with pain–

Hunger?–

 

And then Eric blinks blearily awake.

Everything’s still fuzzy. The last thing he remembers is Justin and Adam tearing around the corner in their horse costume, and then…

What?

Eric sits up: he’s lying on a table next to Jack and Larissa, who seem to be in similar states of discombobulation.

“…Wha?” he manages to say after a while. “Jesus. My head hurts.” He pauses. “My _arm_ hurts.”

It takes him a few minutes to understand the general buzz of conversation in the room. People are muttering that the whole party got roofied, which is _awful_ , but nobody seems to have been hurt, which is… some comfort, at least.

The rest of the night (early morning? It’s hard to say, really) goes by in a dreamlike state. The group slowly coagulates. Shitty seems to have lost everything but the front hemisphere of his costume. Larissa’s wig has blood in it. Nobody can seem to piece together what really happened past a vague recollection of entering the party and maybe having a few drinks. The general consensus is that the food and drinks were drugged by someone, and then the Dean starts a rumour that it was someone from City College trying to make Greendale look ‘unsafe’ and ‘a violation of health codes’– he says it with the air quotes and all, infusing the words with a heavy sarcasm that hides the fact that he knows damn well Greendale _is_ unsafe and a violation of health codes– and everyone accepts that pretty easily.

(A few people say the word ‘zombies’ in hushed tones, but come _on_ , now. That’s just silly. There’s no such thing.)

In the end, Halloween is still Eric’s favourite time of the year. He might just spend it away from Greendale next year.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

“What is it with the study groups at this school?” Justin mutters when he walks into the room.

Eric looks up. He’s ostensibly been studying, but seeing as nobody but him (and now Justin, wearing an annoyed expression) is actually here yet, it’s been mostly him poking at his phone interspersed with brief glances at a page of French verbs. “Hm? Oh, what are they doing _now_?” he says, rolling his eyes. He’s had more experience than any of them with the infamous Spanish study group (technically they’re taking Anthropology now, but everyone still thinks of them as the same group who took Spanish together last year and took over the cafeteria with their fucked-up mafia family shenanigans), so he’s a bit jaded to the rest of the group’s complaints.

“They’ve locked themselves in their study room and they’re, like, getting naked and ripping up the carpet and shit,” Justin says. “I asked someone what was happening and they said that one of them _lost a pen_. So when everyone gets kicked out of the library because _someone_ fucked up their study room, we’ll know who to blame.”

“Jesus,” Eric says. “Naked? Well, you kinda get used to ‘em after a while, I guess.” He takes the opportunity to shut his French textbook and turn in his chair so he’s facing Justin. “I took a class with some of them last year– the one about seizing the day? And let me tell you, Mister Seacrest Sportsjacket likes to _pretend_ that he’s above the rest of their nonsense, but he’s just as bad. And they all got in some kinda fight in December last year? Against some bullies that I ain’t too fond of either, mind you, but _honestly_.”

“God, I haven’t even got any classes with them,” Justin says. “I’m half-annoyed and half-intensely curious about what actually happens in that room. Like, with all the stories I hear, it sounds like they’re constantly at each other’s throats? But then sometimes you walk past and they’re, like, hugging, or listening to the tall guy give a speech, or crying, or enjoying themselves, and it’s like…” He shakes his head in wonder. “It’s easy to be pissed at them for being disruptive, but I guess me and Adam also sing really loudly in the cafeteria?”

“ _Lord,_  no,” Eric says with a hand over his heart. He’s thinking about the disaster that was the previous year’s STD Fair, and also the Transfer Dance, and also the Halloween party, and _also_ the paintball war. Sure, the other study group might be a big awful happy family, but they sure as hell don’t act like it when they’re causing scenes and destroying the campus. “Y’all ain’t anywhere _near_ as bad as that group. When something big happens at this school, it’s either about them, or they _make_ it about them. I swear, it’s like they thrive on drama and slapstick.”

Adam trails in behind Justin, followed by Shitty and Larissa. “What are we talking about in here? You gossiping about me behind my back?” he says in mock-offense. “ _I_ thrive on drama and slapstick. You know that, Eric.”

Rolling his eyes, Eric says, “Yeah, but you don’t do things like… give the pottery teacher a nervous breakdown, or get naked to play pool because you don’t know when to stop.” He pauses and looks at Shitty. “Actually, I take that back. All study groups are exactly the same.”

“Dudes, why the hell are we in here?” says Larissa. “There’s a fucking _puppy parade_ going on in the quad. Jack’s already out there.”

Justin moves faster than any human being Eric has seen before. “ _P_ _UPPY PARADE_?” he yells. “Why was I not informed of this?!” He’s out the door, grabbing Adam’s hand on the way past, before any of them can formulate an answer.

Well, that’s nice. Eric smiles and puts his textbook back into his bag, following the rest of his friends out the door. The Spanish study group can have their weird misadventures all they like; _he’s_ going to spend the afternoon watching puppies in parade floats with his friends.

(When they walk past Study Room F, Eric does his best not to ogle. They _are_ pretty naked in there.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

It’s safe to assume that Family Day _happens_.

Everyone meets Justin’s cousin Ava, and one of Adam’s sisters makes it down– Sophia, the one who works in fashion design– and of course it’d be asking for trouble if Jack’s parents wandered around the Greendale campus, so they just say hi to everyone from Jack’s phone when they call him in the morning, and Larissa says her brother says he would have come if he lived closer, and Eric smiles through it all and thanks everyone silently for not asking where his relatives are.

Nobody calls him Dicky.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

On a Thursday in late November, Eric wakes up at noon and takes a welcome moment to revel in a day where he only has one class (History of Ice Cream at three) and no pressing homework. That is, he takes a moment to revel in it, and then promptly realises that he’s reveling in the wrong day.

Shoot.

He’s _actually_ late for Math, behind on his homework for Home Economy, and woefully unprepared for his presentation in Theory of Kitchen Chemistry. And to top it all off, he doesn’t even have French today– one of the only classes he actually wants to go to (apart from History of Ice Cream, because _come on_ ) and enjoys studying for.

“Augh!” he screams into his pillow, before rolling out of bed and onto the floor, rushing to get dressed before his Math professor chews him out for being late and makes him do sudden-death algebra in front of the class _again_ , even though it’s probably a lost cause already.

And that just about sets the tone for the rest of his day: class goes horribly, he can’t concentrate on anything, he doesn’t have time to hang out with any of his friends. He passes Larissa once in the hall but all he gets is a hair-tousling and a promise to see him the next day at study group. Someone bumps into him as he’s leaving Math, which makes him drop his folder of notes, which makes him late for Home Ec, which mean’s he’s the one who has to clean off the tables at the end of the lesson. (He touches a piece of gum under a desk and almost starts crying right there.)

So when he gets back to his dorm at five, feeling disgustingly overwrought and tired, he collapses into bed and immediately takes a nap that he feels like he’s needed for a year.

 

The second time Eric wakes up on that Thursday is at fourteen minutes past nine, and even then he only gets out of bed because he fell asleep in his jeans and has that horrible warm ache in his skin from messing up his circadian rhythm. Grumbling, he crosses his messy room to the door so he can go down to the bathroom at the end of the hall and brush his teeth and properly go to bed, but when he opens the door… It takes him a moment to properly parse the sight. He even does the comical double-take/eye rub combo.

The hallway is entirely taken up by a sprawling network of blankets, forming passageways and steepled roofs and corridors and what looks like a coliseum in the distance. Eric crouches down. There’s an entrance to the fort that covers the bottom half of his doorway, and when he looks inside he can see almost everyone from his floor milling about in their pajamas, talking or playing card games or watching tv; it’s simultaneously unbelievable and perfectly credible for Greendale, and it only takes Eric a moment to blink the sleep from his eyes and open up the group chat on his phone.

==FRENCH STUDY GROUP (AKA THE STEVE IRWIN FAN CLUB) (AKA JUSTIN OLURANSI AND THE FUNKY BUNCH) (AKA ADAM STOP CHANGING THE GROUP CHAT NAME)==

Today at 9:19pm

**EB:** GUYS!!! This is absolutely urgent. There’s a massive blanket fort at Greendale right now and I have not had a sleepover for far too long. Come in your pajamas!! There will be s’mores!!

**JZ:** Isn’t that a fire hazard?

**SK:** BRAH!!!!!! BE THERE IN LIKE 2 MINS I GOTTA PUT SOME BOXERS ON  HOLY SHIT

**JO:** ohhh my goddd holy shit all my middle school dreams are coming true

**JO:** adam bro can u pick me up??

**AB:** ON MY WAY

**AB:** [car emoji] [alarm emoji] [dance emoji]

**LD:** dude it’s already spread down to the art rooms i’ve been in here all day and i didn’t even hear it being built

**LD:** where are we meeting btw this thing is fucking big

**LD:** i’m talking like labyrinthian levels of big here. gargantuan. eldritch

**LD:** goddamn blanket fort of leaves. i looked inside and it was like ten feet wider than is physically possible

**SK:** update: currently absolutely gapping it across campus in my wonder woman boxers

**JZ:** Christ, Shitty.

**EB:** Meet at my dorm? We can find a free spot somewhere in the hallway.

**EB:** And I will have you know, Jack, that I have a perfectly safe indoor burner that has never set fire to a single building.

**EB:** So there. ( ｰ̀εｰ́ )

**JZ:** I’ll be there in five minutes.

.

Shitty shows up at Eric’s dorm first, on his hands and knees and– true to form– wearing his Wonder Woman boxers and nothing else. Larissa meanders in after him in sweatpants and an overlarge shirt that says I BOUGHT THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT, and she’s followed by Justin and Adam (and since when did they have matching Pokemon pajamas?) who look so excited they might burst. Jack finally brings up the rear in an old Habs shirsey and cotton shorts.

“So we’re just going to wander through the tunnels until we find somewhere to sit?” he says, kneeling just inside the entrance to the blanket fort.

“Oh! Actually,” Eric says, “I heard from a few people passing by that the architects will show you to a private room if you request it. There’s a bell you’re supposed to ring somewhere around here.” So Larissa shuffles backwards on her knees into the main corridor until she finds a bell hanging from the soft ceiling; she rings it and they all wait, Eric clutching his miniature indoor burner and a bag of marshmallows, Justin and Adam exchanging excited light punches and whispering “ _sleepover_!”

Around the corner come two young men wearing headlamps and an air of knowledge. It’s hard to tell in the low light, but they look quite familiar; though, seeing as Greendale really isn’t _that_ large of a school, Eric reasons that he’s probably met them in passing before. The one in front, with a sharp, narrow face and green flannel pajamas, takes the group in with an appraising look. “Room for six?” he says, noting it down on a pad of paper he pulls out of his breast pocket. “Right this way.”

He takes the lead, followed by Adam and Justin, Shitty, Larissa, Jack, and then Eric, with his friend capping off the rear of the group. Eric feels obliged to make conversation, since they’re both being such gracious hosts.

“It’s nice to meet y’all,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “I’m Eric. This is a really swell place you got going on here!”

The guy behind him laughs. “Thanks, dude. I’m Troy, and that’s Abed up the front there. We really didn’t expect this to get so big, to be honest. Like, it originally started with just me and Abed building a blanket fort in his dorm room. But, y’know, people are enjoying it, so.” He shrugs. “I just hope it doesn’t go mainstream. We can’t have our creative genius in the public eye like that.”

Eric freezes. _Troy and Abed_. He should have known that the Spanish group would be behind this _somehow_. Now that he’s got a closer look at Troy’s face, it’s definitely the same one that he’s seen at every major schoolwide catastrophe for the past year and a half. “Well, thanks for having us,” he says, because Troy and Abed on their own don’t seem to have _too_ much chaos associated with them. It’s always when that Jeff Lawyerguy gets involved that people need to _really_ worry.

They end up cosy and comfortable in a small side-room off the main hallway of blankets. Troy and Abed run over the rules with them– no smoking, no farting, no pillow fighting– and officially welcome them to Fluffytown, and then they’re left on their own under the fairylights.

“Well, they were chill dudes,” Shitty says.

“Didn’t you recognise them?” Eric asks. “They’re from the other study group.”

Everyone raises their eyebrows. “Does this mean we’re in the middle of one of their wacky episodes?” Justin asks. “Is this thing gonna end up being the setting for, like, a really intense chase?”

“If it is, then at least we’re off the main road,” Adam says. “We’ll be fine. The worst that could happen is that Eric sets it on fire.”

“Hey!”

“Not saying that it’s deffo going to happen, man!” says Adam, waving his hands frantically. “Just, like, if something here _is_ going to go wrong, it’ll be that it goes up in flames.”

There’s a quiet hum of collective agreement, and then Eric claps his hands together. “Okay! S’mores!”

.

“Mmmmmmm… _Jack_ ,” Larissa hums, pointing half a s’more vaguely around the circle before landing on Jack’s quietly amused face. “Truth or dare?”

Things had followed the natural way of sleepovers, so they’re playing truth or dare now, spread haphazard in a messy circle around the stash of marshmallows and chocolate and graham crackers. Eric is flanked by Larissa to his right and Shitty to his left, who is resting his feet in Jack’s lap, while Justin and Adam are leaning into each other between Jack and Larissa. It’s a very cozy arrangement, Eric muses, even with the distance he instinctively puts between himself and other people.

Jack bites his tongue for a moment, then says, “Truth.” Justin and Adam quietly boo him for being a boring old man who never goes for dares.

“Is that what you usually sleep in?” Larissa says after a few seconds of thought. “Hockey in the streets, hockey in the sheets?”

“Well,” Jack says, “normally I sleep shirtless, but I figured we already have one almost-nudist in the group, so. Didn’t want to step on Shitty’s toes.” He does that thing he does where he dips his head and laughs, and it makes him look so much younger and lighter. “I already felt ridiculous enough driving over here in my pajamas.”

“Nice, dude!” Shitty says, leaning up for a high five. “Up top! Shirtless is the way to go.”

“Ha, yeah,” Jack says, obliging Shitty with a light slap. “I really– hate sleeping with a shirt on? It’s a… a sensory thing, I think.” He absentmindedly toys with the hem of his threadbare shirt. “This being soft and, euh, familiar? It helps. It’s not as good as nothing, but it’s doable.” The admission somehow seems to embarrass him, and he flushes slightly in the dim light. Eric privately thinks it’s nice that they get to see this side of Jack Zimmermann; the softer, deeper side, the side that puts his head down when he laughs so he smiles at the floor. Eric hopes that one day Jack’s head will stay level and the world can see the happiness spilling right out of his mouth.

Larissa nods, then eats the rest of her s’more and says, “Your turn to ask, Jack.”

Jack taps his chin and casts his eyes around the circle before his gaze falls on Shitty’s feet, still sitting across Jack’s thighs. “Shits,” he says. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth!” Shitty says, surprising everyone. Up until now he’s picked dare every time, leading to a few memorable incidents involving moustachey kisses planted upon people’s cheeks or lips or, in Adam’s case, lower back; not to mention the glee with which he’d done a naked handstand at Larissa’s behest. Eric doesn’t think he’ll ever forget what Shitty’s glutes look like when he’s straining to keep balanced.

Thrown by the change in pattern, Jack takes half a minute to come up with something to ask Shitty (preferably something that won’t be _too_ TMI, but with Shitty there’s no guarantees). “How about,” he says, still thinking, and then his eyes light up. “How about this: why did you come to Greendale?”

Shitty widens his eyes. “Have I never told you this story?” he asks, removing his feet from Jack’s lap and sitting up straight. “Surely you’ve heard the whole sordid tale.”

“Not entirely?” Eric says. “Like, you’ve reenacted the argument with your dad more than once, and we know that you… somehow made it halfway across the country, but you’ve never talked about the details. Why you chose to come to this hell on earth.”

“Sorry,” Jack says, like a true Canadian. “You don’t have to– if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. Sorry, I shouldn’t’ve–”

“Jackaroo!” Shitty says, cutting off his apology. “It’s fine. I _love_ shit-talking my father, and that’s, like, my entire backstory, so no worries.” He cracks his knuckles and adopts a pose like an old benevolent storyteller who holds the secrets of the earth. Everyone leans in unconsciously. “Gather ‘round, my children, as we travel back through the mists of time, to the distant era of 2014…”

“That was literally a year ago.”

“Shut _up_ , Jack, I’m trying to create an _atmosphere_.”

“Oh. Sorry. Continue.”

.

(September, 2014)

Spite is a perfectly good motivation for a lot of things. Shitty Knight will swear on that, right into his grave. It’s exactly why he’s using his cheap phone and the local library’s free wifi to google ‘usa worst college liberal low tuition’.

“Sir?” says a teenager with dip-dyed hair. “The library is closing in fifteen minutes, sir, you’ll need to finish up pretty soon.”

“Sure, brah,” Shitty says. “I’ll be out in just a minute.”

He’s in Providence at the moment– ‘the moment’ being the past year– working a few retail jobs so he can rent a place to live and look for the best way to simultaneously get back at his father and live his goddamn life. The course he’s settled on is to find the most un-Harvard college in the country and do something that sure as hell isn’t law; the ideal resolution is that he gets to call his father, surrounded by a group of misfit friends, and rub his fantastic life at a shitty liberal college in his dad’s stuck-up fraudulent asshole _face_. (More likely he’ll end up having to concede to capitalism and get back in a much less audacious and showy way, but where’s the fun in admitting defeat?)

The teenager smiles at him, and then looks around before sitting down at the table next to him. “Do you mind? Sorry, I’ve just been on my feet all day and my supervisor isn’t too big on the idea of breaks,” they say, shaking out their hair.

“No worries,” Shitty says, putting down his phone face-up on the table. “My name’s Shitty, by the way. Or, like, that’s the name I answer to. Sure as hell isn’t the one my dad picked for me.”

“Charlie,” the teen says, smiling. “Can I get a hell yeah for choosing our own names?”

“Hell yeah!” Shitty says, offering a fistbump and a grin. His phone buzzes to let him know he’s got 15% battery left and he dismisses the notification with practiced ease.

Charlie leans over to see. “Worst colleges in America?” they read. “Dude, if you want the _real_ worst college in the states, you gotta look up Greendale Community College in Colorado. No shit, my friend went there, and she paid tuition by teaching the Dean interpretive dance.”

Shitty grins, and obligingly types ‘greendale community college colorado’ into the search bar. Dozens of results pop up, as well as a Wikipedia page and the Rate My Professors page for the school. From scanning the google results, which includes the school’s motto (‘You’re Already Accepted!’) and a few news articles about the subpar facilities and campus, Shitty knows deep down in his heart that this is where he needs to go.

“Oh my _god_ ,” he says after watching a YouTube video of the commercial for Greendale, which tells him that he can register by fax, and also that _Greendale is a slam dunk!_ It doesn’t seem to have been updated since the mid-90s. “It’s so bad. It’s _so_ bad.”

“I know, right?” Charlie agrees. “Why were you looking at shitty colleges, by the way? If that’s not, like, invasive or something.”

“Trying to get back at my dad by getting the worst tertiary education I can get in the continental US,” Shitty replies. “My whole family’s been going to Harvard since before Harvard existed, probably, and I’ve never really agreed with anything my dad spouts, so we had a bit of a falling out– people yelled, _someone_ got disinherited–” he breaks off to point both thumbs at his chest– “and so I figured, like, what better way to show him up than to make it on my own and go to a super shitty college on top of that?” He grins and runs a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “Thanks for the community college idea, though. That will _seriously_ rankle his chains.”

Charlie looks halfway between bemused and amused. “Pretty worthy cause, dude,” they say. “How are you planning on getting to Colorado, though?”

With a determined look in his eyes, Shitty stands up (and politely tucks his chair under the table, because even if everything else he was raised on is bullshit, the etiquette stuck) and says, “Any way I can, Charlie. Any damn way I can.”

The next eleven months or so, when he looks back on them, play out in a kind of storybook-esque fashion: hitchhiking where he can and walking where he can’t, staying with fellow blow-ins in small towns, swapping a nice denim jacket for a fixed-gear bike in Ohio. He takes a lot of odd jobs and becomes very acquainted with Craigslist, and learns how to avoid the sketchier offers. He tells anyone who cares to listen about his destination– that he’s making such an arduous journey to go to some nothing community college seems to confuse most people, but there’s a few who nod and say, “Everyone has their pilgrimage to make.”

And that’s what it is: a goddamn _pilgrimage_. It takes him eleven months and four days– 338 days all up from that conversation with Charlie in Providence to the day he walks into the Dean’s office at Greendale and says, “I want to enrol in your school for the fall semester. Do you have any granola I could chow down on? I’m fucking famished.”

The Dean looks surprised. That might be because Shitty is wearing his favourite shirt (the crop top that says FUCK MONEY GET FUCK) and denim cutoffs, or it might be the content of the sentence he just heard. “Um, okay,” he says, gesturing for Shitty to sit down. “Y’know, you can enrol online super easy these days. But I’m not saying no to a fresh new student at our lovely little school here!” He digs around in one of the drawers on his desk and comes out with a ziploc baggie. “Is trail mix okay?”

“Trail mix is _aces,_  my friend,” Shitty says, and on the paperwork he starts to write down B– and then crosses it out and writes Shitty Knight instead, because who the fuck at Greendale is going to care if his student records don’t match his legal ID?

(One of the questions on the form is _Do you use any recreational drugs? Note: we won’t snitch. We just want to know._ Shitty ticks _No_ just in case.)

“Welcome to Greendale, Mr Knight,” the Dean says when he’s finished. And there it is. He’s here.

All that’s left to do is find happiness, collect a group of great friends, and call his dad (hopefully in the middle of an important meeting) and prove once and for all that [REDACTED] “Shitty” Knight can make his own goddamn way in the world.

Easy.

.

“ _Seriously_?” Eric says when Shitty’s done talking. “You _aspired_ to go here?”

“You betcha,” Shitty grins. “I mean, aspiring due to how awful it is, but that’s still aspiration.”

“Wow.” Eric sits back on his heels and blinks. “That’s… a pretty cool backstory. Coming here out of spite and cross-country.”

“‘Out Of Spite And Cross-Country’,” Justin repeats. “Be a good name for a folk-punk band.” Adam agrees and high-fives him.

“Okay, my turn!” Shitty says gleefully. “Uh… how about… Adam! Mister big bi and ready to try. Truth or dare?”

Adam deliberates, and says, “Y’know, I’m gonna go for truth. Have at it, Shits.”

A moment of silence passes in which Shitty strokes his moustache in the semblance of deep thought. “Would it be too cheap to just recycle the question I did?” he says after a moment. “Because I’m honestly really curious about how _all_ of us ended up here.”

“Nah, that’s fine,” Adam says. “My story’s pretty boring, though, compared to your righteous quest.”

“No origin story is boring!” Shitty admonishes. “You’re bound by the laws of truth or dare. Adam Birkholtz, why did you come to Greendale?”

.

(June, 2015)

There’s an incessant pounding in Adam’s head. He wraps his pillow tight around his ears and shouts at his past self for having _just one more drink_ by himself the previous night. The pounding is _painful_ – arrhythmic and loud and dizzying. It’s accompanied by a piercing voice, which is damn unfair on his sensitive ears and confused brain, because it almost sounds like his sister, who lives in Buffalo.

“Adam!” _BANG BANG BANG._ Why is his sister banging on the inside of his head?

No, wait. That’s the door.

“Hold on, I’m coming!” he yells in response, fumbling his glasses from the bedside table. The banging doesn’t stop. He mutters curses at Anna for having _no_ respect for her poor beleaguered baby brother.

He lurches upright, which he instantly realises is a mistake, and grabs at the wall for balance. A quick glance down at his body serves to confirm that he’s decent enough– an old stained t-shirt and sleep shorts, but Anna’s seen him in worse– so he makes his wobbling way to the door.

“Jesus, Anna. Break the fucking door down, why don’t you?” he says as he opens the door. His sister is standing there, fist raised ready to wail on the innocent wood again. Her outfit consists of a fitted t-shirt and running shorts, and her hair looks different than when Adam last saw it– it’s shaved on one side now, loose curls brushed over to the left side of her head in an artistic wave. Her makeup, as always, is simple, light eyeliner around her hazel eyes and a touch of foundation to the pale skin. Even though she’s two years older than Adam, she’s still half a foot shorter than him; despite her height, she looks undeniably strong and driven. She looks like she could run a marathon and not have a hair out of place.

“A simple ‘hello’ would have worked, you weirdo,” she says, but she smiles and stretches up to hug him anyway. She pulls away and wrinkles her nose. “Go take a shower. I’m making you breakfast.”

Used to his older sister’s to-the-point way of directing a situation, Adam just rolls his eyes and goes to do exactly that.

It’s only when he’s under the shower spray and starting to finally wake up that he vaguely wonders why she’s here. She’s a personal trainer, so it’s not like she has any obvious reason to be here in the suburbs of Denver, rather than in Buffalo, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. But she’s always had a comforting air of knowledge and self-assuredness that spreads into Adam’s skin, and so he doesn’t really question it. She almost definitely has a good reason.

Fifteen minutes of showering and sniffing clothes to find something clean later, he walks into the open-plan kitchen, flushed and feeling alive. That’s the effect Anna has on her immediate surrounds– she gives off this energy that is impossible to escape; she makes everyone around her want to _do_ something. Sure, it made the Birkholtz household a bit over-energised at times, but Adam’s not complaining.

“What’s for breakfast?” he says, leaning over her shoulder as she examines his pantry.

“You have, like, nothing edible in here,” she says. “Do you literally live off ramen and Poptarts? We’re going out for food. Grab your wallet.”

 

Adam drives them to a diner with reasonably healthy options about ten minutes away (he’d driven past a McDonald’s with a pleading look on his face but Anna had shaken her head) and they end up tucked into a corner booth, out of the line of sight of people coming into the building. He orders bacon and eggs but concedes to a salad on the side; Anna gets some ghastly green smoothie and raisin toast.

They eat in relative silence for a few minutes, and then Anna puts down her kale drink and says, “Adam, are you okay?”

It’s not like he wasn’t expecting the question. His sister’s always been very to-the-point, and she habitually looks after everyone around her (sometimes to the point of smothering, but she’s been getting better at pulling back), and Adam isn’t naive enough to think that she came halfway across the country just to say hi.

“I’m… fine, Anna,” he says, not breaking eye contact with his eggs. “The doctors cleared me for medium-level activity last month. And it only twinges when it’s humid.”

“Don’t be evasive,” Anna says. “Not your leg. Are _you_ okay?”

Sighing, Adam flicks a hand out to grab the salt. It’s something to do with his hands, at least. “I don’t know what you want me to say here, okay?” he says. “My career’s over, and I’m feeling just fucking _dandy_ about it. I sure as hell don’t feel directionless and lost, how _stupid_ would that be?” His bacon is drowning in salt, but he’s not that hungry anyway.

“It’s not stupid, Adam.” Anna reaches across the table and takes the salt shaker. “I know that… this was your dream, for a long time. And you got to live it for a few years. And then it was over, and that sucks, but the end of your hockey career– NHL Adam being put back on the shelf– it doesn’t have to mean the end of the rest of you.” She takes a sip of her smoothie, apparently relishing whatever bitter health-sludge it is she’s drinking. “Find something to do, and then _do_ it. It doesn’t have to be as big as playing sport at a national level– in fact, it’s better if it’s something smaller. Get a hobby, or learn something new. Start crocheting. Take a course at the community college, even. Just…” She trails off, touching his hand lightly until he looks up; her face is so earnest that he can’t help but nod. “I just don’t want you to waste away in that big empty house of yours.”

“Yeah,” Adam says. “Yeah. I’ll– I’ll do something. It just… feels like it’s all pointless now, y’know? I failed at my dream.” He shrugs and traces his fork through the yolk of an egg. “I know that’s… like, a negative way of looking at it, but it fucking hurts to be told I’ll never play hockey again.”

Instead of saying some meaningless platitude like _Positive thinking will work wonders!_ Anna says, nodding, “I know. And it’s fine to be hurting, because let’s face it– you got dealt a pretty shit hand! But you didn’t fail. Your anterior cruciate ligament failed, if anything. But it’s not your fault that your knee got fucked up, Adam.” She pats his hand, which could almost be condescending if Adam didn't know her better. “I’m in town for a couple more days. I’ll help clean up your house if you like, even.”

“Will you pay for the food? Pay for your poor sweet babiest brother?” Adam pouts.

“Excuse me, mister NHL million-dollar-salary man. How about _you_ pay for your lovely generous middlest sister?”

“Asshole.”

“You _love_ me.”

He does end up paying, after all. It’s only fair.

Anna stays in one of his three seldom-used guest bedrooms and tidies up his house like an organised tornado; Adam goes online and finds the website of the local community college and enrols before he can talk himself out of it.

So here he is. Retired from the NHL at age twenty-three, yes, but since when has Adam Birkholtz ever taken life lying down?

.

“Your sister sounds like a helluva lady,” Larissa says. “Would it be a total dick move to ask for her number?”

“Larissa!” Adam says. “If you hook up with my sister, I will _literally_ never talk to you again.” He shudders. “She has so much dirt on me.”

“I think you probably had the most reasonable excuse for going here,” muses Eric. “You’re the only one of us who actually, y’know, lived in the area?”

“Yeah, but I have family here,” Justin argues, “so that’s basically the same thing?”

“Jus-tin! Jus-tin!” Adam chants. “I wanna hear _your_ superhero origin story next. Oh my god, imagine if you were Spiderman, and you had to come here to hide your secret identity because nobody would believe that Spiderman goes to Greendale. Are you Spidey? _Are_ you?” He grabs Justin’s shoulder desperately. “ _A_ _re you_?” he implores.

“I’m not Spiderman!” Justin laughs, and then his face turns sober. “But, like… how sick would it be if I _was_. Dude.”

“Spiderman probably gets _mad_ hookups on the daily.”

“Weren’t we talking about why Justin came to Greendale?” says Jack, mildly confused.

“I mean, if you wanna be _boring_ , then sure,” Adam says, rolling his eyes. “Dude,” he whispers to Justin. “Just hypothetically. You’d totally tell me if you were Spiderman, right?”

“Of course, bro,” Justin says, patting Adam’s hand. “But, uh, if you all really want to hear my non-superhero backstory, then who am I to deny the fans?”

.

(May, 2015)

Rainbow Road tends to get a bit boring after you play it for two weeks straight. Justin hasn’t driven off the edge in days; Yoshi does a victory dance in his kart as he whizzes past the finish line in first place yet again.

“Justin?” There's a soft knock at the door and his mother pokes her head inside. “How are you doing, baby?”

“Fine, mom,” he says, even though he knows she’s smarter than that.

She taps her foot in the doorway for a moment, then says, “I’m coming in,” and sits next to him on his bed. Justin pauses Mario Kart but doesn’t meet her eye.

“I’m fine, mom,” he repeats. “Really.”

“Don’t lie to me, Justin,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “What can I do to help?”

And that’s the thing about Ayodele Oluransi: when she says that, she _means_ it. She isn’t in the business of empty promises of a pat on the back or a few comforting words; she asks what she can do to help, and then she _does_ it. She’s sat with him through late-night essays, made flash cards, talked to teachers, given harsh criticism on assignments, made phone calls to five different sets of parents to find who took home his lucky stick tape after practice. When Justin was in high school, she played goalie for Justin to practice shots against, despite never having worn hockey skates in her life. She drove from Toronto to Cambridge to pick him up and wrapped him up in her arms and just said she loved him, and then bought him a sugary latte with whipped cream because she knows exactly how he likes it.

She cares, so much and so fiercely, and Justin smiles down at his bedsheets.

“I think,” he starts, and pauses for a moment. His mother doesn’t butt in, just waits patiently with a hand on his shoulder. “I think I need to– get away for a while. Not… not move out permanently, but just… be somewhere else. Clear my head. Maybe stay with some relatives so I’m not on my own, though.”

His mother chews her lip for a few seconds. “I think that would be good for you,” she says, and then she pulls her laptop out of nowhere and opens the Excel spreadsheet of the locations of the sprawling Oluransi extended family.

The affinity for Excel is something Justin inherited from his mother. They both like to graph things, to organise information so they know all the variables and can plan a situation accordingly. For Justin, it can tend to fan the flames of his anxiety a little– it’s hard to quantify subjective things, and dwelling on the endless array of potential disasters that could arise from one innocent action is an unfortunate side-effect of having an anxiety disorder. So he’s tried to keep his Excelling contained, sensible. (It works. Usually.)

His mother, on the other hand, graphs everything because of how eager she is to help people. Having connections and information and contact numbers noted down in a properly-named file is infinitely helpful when something unexpected comes up.

This particular spreadsheet has the current address, phone number, email, full name, and columns more information on all of her relatives that she keeps in reasonable contact with, and some others besides. She scrolls down, muttering to herself.

“Ngozi…” she hums. “No, she’s got enough on her plate at the moment.”

“How about Ava?” Justin says, scanning the screen at a comparable speed to his mother. “She always says she wants us to visit her more.”

“Your cousin’s lovely, but,” his mother says, pursing her lips and stopping on the row beginning with _Ava D. Oluransi_. “Colorado, Justin, really?”

“I don’t know.” Justin shrugs and looks down at his hands. “Just a thought.” He grins. “I can vet her new girlfriend for you. Make sure my darling cousin isn’t hanging with the wrong crowd again.”

Sighing good-naturedly, Justin’s mother rolls her eyes and says, “I’ll call her tonight.”

And that’s how it goes. His mother makes it _happen_.

Justin packs his suitcases and catches a plane to Denver two weeks later, and Ava greets him at the gate with her entire ebullient self. She’s the same height as him and wears heels half the time, so he actually has to lean up slightly to hug her. Her hair is in braids, shot through with red streaks, and she’s wearing a top consisting of every single sequin on the planet. It’s great to see her.

“Justin!” she says. “Oh my god, it’s _so_ good to see you.” She waves away his protests and carries both of his suitcases to the waiting car, where her current girlfriend is sitting, grinning, in the driver’s seat.

“I’m Bee,” the girlfriend says, smirking under her sandy brown hair and shaking Justin’s hand. “You must be Justin. I’ve heard a _lot_ about you.” With her other hand, she adjusts her glasses and winks. Justin smiles uncertainly.

While Bee pulls out of the airport, Ava turns back to where Justin is sitting in the back seat and says, “You’re going to love it here, J, seriously.” She leans in conspiratorially. “I won’t tell your mom if you wanna smoke weed.”

“Ava!” Bee says sharply. “At least wait until we get home to introduce him to Colorado’s rich cultural landscape.”

Justin gets a really nice spare room in Ava and Bee’s cute little house in outer Denver, and he puts his luggage down in the corner and looks at the bed and thinks that maybe he can finally relax for one goddamn second.

And then he thinks: _I’m wasting time that I should be using to do something productive._

“I need to be doing something with myself,” he says out loud, and after unpacking he checks his email and finds one where the subject line reads _Looking for a way to spend your time in Colorado, JUSTIN OLURANSI?_ and it seems like as good a sign as any, so he opens the email from auto.correspondeance@greendale.edu and tries not to think about why this automated email system knows he’s in the area and contemplating taking classes. (It’s easier to focus on the misspelling of correspondence– it’s weirdly unprofessional for a college, even a community college.)

In any case, there’s a link to the course listing, and Greendale offers a simple-looking entry level biology course, so Justin figures that not too much can really go wrong.

“I’m thinking about taking some classes at the community college,” he says over dinner one night.

“Oh!” says Bee, grinning. “Good idea. City College is great, I did some creative writing workshops there over the summer.”

“No, Greendale,” Justin says. “It seems… decent.”

“Um.” Ava puts down her fork and exchanges a Look with Bee, and then blinks at Justin. “I mean, it’s up to you, but _really_?”

There’s another email in his inbox when he gets back from the same address as the first, the subject of which reads _Why Should YOU Go Greendale?_ It talks a lot about new opportunities while carefully not specifying any of said opportunities and mentions Luis Guzman, like, four separate times, but somehow Justin finds himself smiling and nodding.

The way he sees it is: if he wants to dip his toes back into the academic pool, isn’t it better to start in the shallow end? (The kiddie pool, even. The soap scum-stained bathtub.) City College, from what he can tell, is a respectable learning institution, and that comes with expectations. Expectation means that Justin will put pressure on _himself_. Pressure on himself means that– something awful could happen again.

So Greendale seems like the better option here, all things considered. Justin enrols online that night and then Bee comes into his room and plays Take On Me by A-Ha really loudly, so that’s about all he gets done, but he still feels like he’s taken some important step towards the future.

“IIIII’LL BEEEEE GOOOOOOONE,” Bee shouts, perfectly on key. “IN A DAY OR _TWOOOOOOOOOOOO_!”

“I love that song,” Justin says, and he forgets about school entirely for the rest of the night and joins in singing.

.

“Wow…” Adam says. “Imagine if we’d lost you to City College. That’d be some Romeo and Juliet level forbidden friendship shit right there.”

“Y’know, I never _did_ figure out those… creepily laser-targeted emails,” says Justin, frowning.

“It’s the Dean, hun,” Eric says. “It’s usually better not to question what he does. Sure, it might not be strictly _legal_ , but it got you here, didn’t it?” He leans across the circle and pats Justin on the knee. “Just be thankful he ain’t meddling in your personal life like he does the other study group.”

Everyone silently thanks the heavens that the Dean isn’t a part of their interpersonal relationships.

“You wanna go next, Eric?” Justin says after the informal moment of silence has passed.

Eric’s breath hitches in his throat and he takes a moment to unlock his jaw from where it’s clamped, suddenly, around the words and the fear. He says, “Is it okay if someone else goes first?” and hopes they won’t press him for it.

“I’ll go,” Larissa says, hooking an arm around Eric’s shoulders. “I’ve told you about Cindy, right?”

“Cindy who?” says Adam.

“Cindy _Wu_. My ex-girlfriend. She was great, but we really wanted different things,” explains Larissa. “So I got rejected from RISD, and then I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life, so–”

“Paint us a word picture!” Shitty cries. “Show, don’t tell.”

“Jeez, _fine_ ,” Larissa says, rolling her eyes. “Hold your damn horses.”

.

(February, 2015)

Being an artist in the real world sucks _total ass_.

That isn’t news to Larissa, really. She’s always been on the cynical side, and she’s always known that it would be had for her to find a proper job doing what she loves. But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with shitty clients who want her to work for a fraction of minimum wage.

She gets by, at least. She’s in Denver at the moment, taking advantage of the Colorado lifestyle (puff puff pass!) and working a few part-time jobs here and there to cover rent on the tiny place she shares with a few other artists she might, at a stretch, call friends.

Right now, she’s sitting on her laptop, looking at an email and trying to figure out what the fuck it _really_ means.

It’s from dalmationdean@gmail.com, and it’s honest-to-god asking for her to make a fursuit. _Will pay whatever is necessary_ , it says. _Please use discretion. If you want, I can give you some credits at the community college I run._ **_Please_ ** _use discretion. You seem pretty cool, just don’t make this public information._

Shrugging, Larissa opens a new tab and searches ‘community college colorado furry’ and the first result is the site for Greendale Community College. She wonders who set the keywords for this site. (Targeting demographics is pretty common, she supposes.)

She emails back: _Fill out this contract and send me your measurements and we’ll get started. I wouldn’t say no to an art degree. How about some paintings of this dope dalmatian for a cheap dorm?_

God, she’s good at negotiation.

(See, even if she didn’t get into RISD, there’s still other places she can study art. A community college sounds right about her speed, honestly. Somewhere cheap to live during the school year, art rooms to chill in, and a furry for a dean. What a stunning deal.)

.

“Sorry it’s so short,” Larissa says. “I mean, my story had some juicy goss about the Dean’s private life, so I guess it balances out.”

“Well, that’s less surprising than I would have expected,” Justin says.

“That the Dean’s a furry?” asks Shitty. “I mean, yeah, isn’t that common knowledge?”

“What’s a furry?” Jack asks.

“Okay, first of all, I’m _not_ giving this talk to him,” Shitty says. “Second, subject change: Jack, want to give your Greendale testimonial? S’all cool if you don’t.”

“No, it’s fine,” Jack says, probably still wondering what a furry is. “I mean… you know the first part, probably? It was all over TV.”

Adam gasps in shock. “ _You_ were on _TV_ ?! Are we friends with a _famous person_?” Justin elbows him.

“Ha ha, Adam,” Jack says. “Do you want to hear about how I got a non-creepy email from the Dean or not?”

.

(July, 2015)

It’s common sense to not check your email after you come out publicly and unplanned, but Jack feels bad if he lets the little bold number in brackets run too high.

It’s eight in the morning, and over his breakfast of an egg white omelette and toast he opens his laptop at the kitchen table to run through it like some kind of hybrid of routine and self-punishment. He skims over the ones with obviously hateful titles, ignores the spam, considers reading a few supportive-looking fan letters, and deletes anything with the words “concerned parent” in the subject line.

But something about this one– subject a simple ‘Thank You’, from craig.pelton@greendale.edu– catches his eye. Maybe it’s just that his computer lags for a split second and it stops scrolling right on that email, or maybe it’s just the way he feels in that exact moment that he wants to see why someone thinks he’s so deserving of their gratitude. Whatever it is, he clicks through to read it.

_Dear Jack Zimmermann,_

_First of all, I’d just like to say thank you for your bravery. I know you must be hearing a lot of the same sentiment - but I really do admire the courage it takes to stand up and denounce your occupation for its shortcomings, all while owning who you are, publicly and without apology._

_Secondly - and forgive me if this comes off as a little tone deaf - congratulations on coming out. As someone who works in education who is also openly a lot of things, I know how hard the struggle between being yourself and keeping up your professionalism can be. Some people might call you cowardly for laying low like you have been, but it’s honestly amazing that you were able to be so public and open about this part of you, and taking some time for yourself is what you - not as a bisexual celebrity, but as a human being with feelings - are entitled to. Just remember that no matter how many people might sling accusations and insults at you, your supporters outnumber them both in numbers and in the truth of our convictions._

_The real purpose of this email - apart from to try to tell you how much I admire you for doing what you’ve done - is to extend an offer to you. My school - Greendale Community College, CO - would be happy to welcome you, if you’re looking for something to occupy your time. Reply at your leisure, and don’t feel pressured to say yes. (And don’t worry about the press, either. There’s plenty of other things they can focus on at Greendale.)_

_Sincerely,_

_Dean Craig Pelton_

_Greendale Community College_

_You’re Already Accepted!_

 

Jack stares at the email for a second, then shakes his head and laughs. It’s silly. Why should he travel halfway across the country to go to some school he’s never heard of, just because the dean sent him a nice message?

(He tries to ask himself that a few more times– when his mother asks him what he’d like to do, and he says that maybe he’d like to live somewhere new for a while, get out of the family home and the associations it brings; when his father suggests he get a simple hobby, or take some classes, and he says he’s thinking about going back to school to get some kind of degree; when he’s looking at apartment listings in the outer suburbs of Denver and tabbing between the real estate site and the enrolment form for Greendale.

He tries to ask himself _why_ , and he can never quite come up with an answer more coherent than _why not_?

For the first time, there’s nothing really stopping him. He has nothing at stake– no career, no corresponding career-ending secrets– and he really always has wanted to study something.

So. Why not?)

.

Everyone’s kind of tired at this point, but they still all collectively soften and smile at Jack’s story.

“Aw,” says Shitty. “Who knew the Dean could be so heartfelt?”

“Who knew Jack could be so _reckless_?” says Adam. “Like, _damn_ , dude! He could have been a murderer! And you looked up Greendale online and _still_ decided to go here?”

Jack shrugs. “I mean, y’know. Why not?”

There’s a contemplative silence around the circle in which everyone fails to come up with a decent answer to the question that isn’t a direct attack on the quality of learning at Greendale.

“So, Eric?” Jack says. “You don’t have to, obviously, but. No judgement here. Hell, I just told everyone how I basically went here because I couldn’t find a decent reason _not_ to.” He smiles lopsidedly, and something in Eric goes warm, and he suddenly feels exactly like Jack in that he can’t find a reason not to show this group of people this last carefully curated part of himself.

“If y’all are willing to listen,” he says quietly, and everyone nods enthusiastically.

“I’ll be the _best_ listener, dude,” Justin says. “Switch my career path from surgeon to peer therapist and everything. I’ll listen the _fuck_ outta your tragic backstory.”

“Justin!” Larissa admonishes. “Let the man speak.”

Eric dips his head and laughs. “Well, no time like the present to spill your guts, hey?”

.

(November, 2013)

Samwell might be Samwell, but all that serves to prove is that Georgia is still Georgia.

“Oh, _honey_ ,” his mama says when she picks him up from the Atlanta airport (she’d wanted to drive all the way to Samwell herself and take him home in person, but the thought of so long in a car with her so soon after the fresh pain of leaving Samwell is too much for Eric), and Eric lets himself crumple into her arms and cry in the baggage claim like he’s ten and not eighteen.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he says, but she just shushes him and holds him closer.

“Ain’t got nothing to be sorry about, baby,” she says.

Privately, he thinks she’s lying to spare his feelings, that Coach might have something different to say– but he takes the comfort while it’s offered.

During the drive home he doesn’t talk, and his mama stops trying to press him after the first ten minutes of sullen silence. He’s thinking– ruminating, even– on everything he could have done better.

He could have skated through. He could have worked harder. He could have made better friends with the team.

(He could have come out to someone to lessen that incredible indelible weight on his shoulders.)

They pull into the driveway at home, and Eric feels like he’s rotting inside. It feels like admitting defeat: coming back home, back to the place he doesn’t think he can ever really be himself, from a _liberal arts college_ which would have been the perfect place to grow and thrive if he hadn’t been so useless and quit.

Maybe it’s that stress, pulling at his frayed edges– his cup runneth over with _anxiety and fear_ – which makes him drop his luggage in the middle of the living room floor and look his mother and father in the eyes and say, defiantly, “I’m _gay_ , I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m gay.”

It’s– for the seconds after he says it, he’s terrified, and then he isn’t scared anymore, because there’s too much fear pent up in his heart and it’s replaced by a washing, spreading, numbness, and Mama drops a plate in the kitchen, and Coach half-rises from his armchair, and Eric grabs his suitcase (leaves the bag with his pads and skates, leaves the phantom sensation of being checked) and Mama comes around the corner from the kitchen and says, choked, “Baby, _what_ did you say?”

There’s so much pain and confusion in her voice, and maybe it doesn’t mean that she hates him and wants him gone, but Eric doesn’t really have it in him to be patient while his parents work through whether they think their son is an abomination or not.

He has to get out of here.

“I said I’m gay, Mama,” he repeats coldly, and then, “and I’m an adult, and I’m leaving, because I don’t– you can’t stop me, and I’m leaving before you can kick me out, and– you’re gonna say that _this is a phase,_  but it’s not, and I know who I am, and I can’t be that person here. Not anymore.” He still doesn’t really feel anything, but by the end of it he’s crying. So is his mama.

The thing is, neither of them get up to stop him walking out the door.

 

After that, it’s a bit– hazy. He makes it to a bus stop, and he makes it to Atlanta, somehow, and from there he thinks he might get on a train, or have a panic attack behind a building, or buy a Coke from a vending machine; the driving thought in his mind is that he has to get out of Georgia, has to get away, because he’s _leaving_ and nobody can stop him.

The thing is, he doesn’t feel as free as he’d expected coming out to feel. It’s mostly empty and raw and a rushing sound in his eardrums.

Somehow (he honestly doesn’t know how; maybe it was a wandering spirit that took pity on him and helped) he makes it to _Colorado_ , of all places, and finally the need to escape bleeds out of him and he just feels– lost. Homesick, almost.

(The thing is, his phone has been buzzing nonstop, but he hasn’t let himself look at it once. He buys a cheap flip phone from a convenience store and buries his old one in the bottom of his luggage.)

He needs: a job. Somewhere to live. Ideally, somewhere to study that won’t need a hockey scholarship to pay for tuition. Somewhere he won’t have to go back into the closet.

So, it’s really only logical that he finds Greendale. (They’re always in need of more help in the kitchen, especially from someone who can _actually cook_ ; the dorms are cramped but he’s not picky; and the Dean even agrees to levy the cost of his classes in exchange for some pies every few weeks.)

“You’ll be welcome here, Mr Bittle,” the Dean says, smiling.

“Mr Bittle was my father,” Eric says. “Call me Eric. Please.”

.

Nobody really knows what to say after Eric’s story.

Eventually, Shitty offers, “Shit, Eric,” and nothing else, and Eric cracks a watery smile.

“It’s fine, guys,” he says. “It’s– I’m okay, now, really. It was two years ago. I mean– not that I don’t think about it sometimes, about tryin’ to talk to them or something, but–” He sniffs and tries, unconvincingly, to hide it. “Do I win tragic backstory of the night?”

“Eric,” Jack murmurs, and suddenly Eric is being held, and he’s crying, and there’s more arms at his back, and everyone is forming around him a shield, and he feels hurt and empty but filling, slowly, with something warm and trustworthy.

 

They don’t burn down the blanket fort, in the end. It _does_ come collapsing down on them at some ungodly hour in the morning, but nobody is motivated enough to do anything about it, so they sleep comfortably, curled together; a circle, heads on legs on laps on arms on chests on backs on steady pulses, stitched together in the way of things growing anew. Parts of them are cut raw and parts of them hurt, but something in it thrills of closeness rather than shying away from the pain.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

“Philosophy class is, like, _mad_ cool,” says Shitty, waving around a potentially lethal stack of books. “Basically all we do is read shit that other people have written and discuss it. And the discussion is so informal it’s not even funny. Everyone just ends up saying, like, ‘Oh, me too,’ or ‘Same,’ or ‘I know that feeling,’ and then we all laugh about nihilism. Like, today, right? We were talking about _The Myth of Sisyphus_ , which is about, uhh... absurdism and how fucked the world is, and it talks about this guy Sisyphus, okay? And he was this Greek guy who fucked around with Death and got punished by having to push a boulder up a mountain every day, and at the end of the day it’d roll down and he’d have to do it all again tomorrow.”

“Why not just secure it at the top so it doesn’t fall down?” says Justin, not looking up from his French textbook.

“Man,” Shitty says, gesticulating wildly to the general meaning of _you’ve got it all wrong_ , “no, man, it’s not about getting the boulder to the top, it’s all about the punishment. It’s the futility of it. He has to do this _forever_ , and it’s not even the ordeal of getting the shit up to the top, it’s having to watch it roll all the way back down like you never made any progress at all. It’s a fucking metaphor for life.”

“Depressing,” says Adam. “Greek mythology had some absolutely fucked punishments.”

“I know!” crows Shitty. “But that’s the whole point the author was trying to make, right? Like, when Sisyphus is walking back down the mountain, he’s aware of how pointless his task is. He’s doomed to failure and pain and strife, but the awareness of that– our awareness that the world is chronically absurd and has no actual inherent order to it– is what lets him gain acceptance. He’s condemned to this. We’re condemned to this life. But if we accept it for what it is, rather than trying to apply human reasoning to it, then we can be content.” Shitty spreads his arms, affecting an expression of wisdom and peace. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” he quotes.

“That’s so sad,” says Eric. “Why can’t Sisyphus want more? I’d feel bad imagining him happy if all he was doing for the rest of eternity was being tormented.”

Shitty nods, gleeful that someone has sparked a debate. “That’s philosophy for you, though. It’s not so much about logic, or, like, _rational_ responses to stuff like this. It’s meant to be an allegory for how we should approach our own lives.”

“This isn’t French, Shitty,” says Jack. “Get back to work. I’m not going to help you cram before the test tomorrow if you keep talking about Sisyphus.”

Shitty bites the inside of his cheek. “ _Technically,_  the essay was originally in French, so…”

Jack puts his pen down and fixes Shitty with an intense stare. “Did you _read_ it in French?”

“I _mean_ ,” Shitty says, faltering in his affectation of enlightenment. “No?” He gives up the pose as a lost cause and leans forward instead. “But come _on_ , Jack, we’ve been studying all morning. We’ll be fine for the test.”

“All morning?” says Larissa, leaning back in her chair. “Dude, we’ve only been here for, like, an hour. It’s just past eleven.”

Eric looks blearily up from his book at the clock on the wall. “11:11,” he says. “Everyone make a wish.”

“I wish our teacher would embrace nihilism so we don’t have to do any more pop quizzes,” says Adam.

“I wish me and Adam were allowed to sit together in class,” Justin says. “Like, we aren’t _that_ disruptive. We were just discussing modern art.” He looks at Adam sideways and snorts. “The fucking Jesus painting restoration.” He and Adam devolve into their own private world of laughter, as they’re so prone to doing.

Eric thinks for a moment, and then says, “I wish for Sisyphus to have a nice day.”

“I wish everyone would actually use this _study group_ that gathers in the _study room_ to, I don’t know,” says Jack, lowly, “ _actually study_?”

“Nah,” says Larissa. “I’m with Eric. 11:11, I wish for Sisyphus to have a nice day.”

“Oh man, can I change my wish? 11:11, Sisyphus has a nice day,” Justin says.

“Shit, me too,” says Adam. “11:11, have a nice day, Sisyphus.”

“I can’t believe I’m friends with all of you,” Jack mutters.

“Sisyphus nice day!” shouts Shitty, and the rest of the study session is kind of a lost cause after that.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Suffice it to say: their French final is on a Monday, and Shitty invites them over for a studying bee, so the Haus over the weekend is full of amateur Francophones and one very very tired Quebecois.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Larissa has been bedazzling since four in the goddamn morning. Her eyes and fingers and neck hurt so much that she wants to denounce the entire institute of modern art and go live in a cave like a little fucking gremlin with no concept of aesthetic or form and function, but she’s nothing if not a good friend. Also, she’s lived in a cave once, and it wasn't as good as she’d been convinced by Bear Grylls, so the most she does is swear under her breath at her damn artistic soul and coax her creaking index finger to pull the trigger of her jury-rigged heavy-duty bedazzling gun.

“Jack says he’s on his way!” Eric says, shrilly, from where he’s pacing the length of the study room. “Larissa, what’s the status?” He sounds like he’s two seconds from eating his phone out of sheer nerves.

Larissa blinks fiercely at the artwork in front of her. It stubbornly refuses to complete itself. “Five more minutes?” she says raspily. “There’s just this one section, and then it’ll be ready.” She turns and fixes Eric with a weary gaze. “ _Chill_ , Eric. It’s going to be fine. Shits isn’t going to care if I’m still putting the finishing touches on his birthday present when he gets here.”

“But it’s– it’s the principle of the thing!” Eric retorts. “And it isn’t just the present. Adam and Justin still aren’t back with the food, and Jack is great and I trust him but he might give the surprise away, and the more I look at this room the more I think we should have decorated more–” Larissa cuts him off by pointing her bedazzling gun at him threateningly.

“I say again,” Larissa says, eyes not leaving Eric’s face. “ _Chill_. He won’t care if we fuck it up a bit. He’s going to be over the moon that we even did anything.”

Eric takes a big shuddery breath and visibly relaxes his shoulders. “Yeah. Right. You’re right.” He smiles at Larissa. “I should have learned by now not to question you.”

“Damn right you should have,” Larissa says, and she gets back to applying rhinestones to her art.

Silence hovers in the room for a few more minutes, and then Eric taps at his phone and squeaks. “They’re outside the library!” He nervously flutters into action, darting around the room to straighten banners or realign balloons. Despite his clear need for reassurance, he doesn’t interrupt Larissa in her final stretch of bedazzlement. She appreciates it.

“Just a few more,” she says. Her hands hate her with a passion right now. She’s glad their French exam is already over, or she wouldn’t be able to write anything, let alone sentences demonstrating her knowledge of verb conjugation. Five hours all up of bedazzling, plus the time to actually sculpt the bedazzled object itself, and it’s shaping up to be the single best piece of art she’s ever created. She just needs to focus and put on the last gemstone. _One more_ , she tells herself, and finally her shaking aching finger twitches on the trigger and she’s done. “Done!” she shouts, and she crawls backwards on her knees to admire her work.

Eric helps her to her feet and joins her in admiration. “He’s going to love it so much, Larissa,” he says. “You’re so talented.”

She’s about to say something dismissive like _I mean, it’s okay, I guess_ , but then Shitty walks through the door and the confetti cannons go off, so instead she poses next to Eric and shouts, “Surprise!”

Shitty gasps. (He inhales some confetti while he does it, but nobody points it out.) “You _guys_!” he says, looking around the room in amazement. To be fair, it is a bit of a spectacle– they shut all the blinds so the decorations wouldn’t be visible from outside, so stepping inside is a shock. There’s balloons in all the brightest colours they could find, including ones with slogans like HAPPY BIRTHDAY FUCKFACE and some– well, _creatively-shaped_ ones; streamers hanging from literally every possible place one could hang streamers; confetti scattered across the floor and table (and shelves and chairs and people and– yeah, they’re going to have to clean that up); a small Christmas tree in the corner, drowning in ornaments; and, of course, Larissa’s present, sitting front and centre on the table.

“Holy shit!” he says when he sees it. “That’s– oh my god!” He looks like he’s about to cry. Jack edges into the room behind him and moves around to where Eric is grinning at his friend’s amazement. Larissa watches them in her periphery and carefully listens to their conversation. She likes to know things, to be on top of the times.

“Where’s the food?” Jack mutters, leaning down to Eric’s head and probably only barely resisting a chirp about his height.

Eric turns his head slightly and says, “I don’t know. I sent the boys off nearly twenty minutes ago. Surely it can’t be that hard to carry some boxes from the kitchens?”

Jack shrugs. “I mean, it _is_ Justin and Adam,” he says. “There was probably another best bros contest and they got distracted trying to beat those guys from the Spanish study group.”

“Sure,” Eric says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “In any case, they’d better not have ruined the cake I made.”

“It’ll be fine, Eric,” Jack says, nudging Eric’s shoulder. “You’ve put so much work into this. I’m really regretting the fact that my birthday’s in August. I’ll have to wait another eight months for you to throw _me_ a party with dick-shaped balloons, eh?”

Instead of saying any of the multitudes of witty replies that Larissa _knows_ he has carefully stored up for the moments when Jack makes an unfairly funny joke, Eric elbows him in the side and shushes him. This day is about Shitty. (And an overall holiday celebration as well, and relief at finishing their fall semester, and joy that everyone passed French 101. But mostly Shitty.) She shoots the two a look that she imbues with the sentiment _stop flirting and let Shitty have his day_ and switches her attention back to the man of the hour, who is apparently wordlessly ecstatic at his present.

“Bro!” he finally chokes out. “How did you know exactly what I’ve always wanted for my birthday?”

Larissa crossed her arms, satisfied. “I’m a very perceptive person,” she says. “Also, you’ve expressed your need for a– and I quote– ‘huge glitzy fucking fluorescent dong for my living room’ a number of times.”

And that’s definitely what it is. On the table before them is a four-foot tall, lovingly bedazzled, bright pink sculpture of a human penis, towering gleamingly in the room and sending showers of light into the corners with the glorious false gemstones that cover every inch of its alarming fuchsia bulk. It’s awful. It’s garish. It’s _Shitty_. Larissa smiles. It’s the best fucking thing she’s ever made.

Shitty is crying a little bit. “ _Bro_ ,” he says passionately. “This is the best birthday party ever.” He picks Larissa up entirely and spins her around gleefully, giggle-sobbing into her shoulder. She puts up with it (okay, maybe she laughs as well).

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jack pull Eric into his side in a one-armed hug. _Slick, Zimmermann_ , she thinks, and then everyone gets distracted by the door slamming open and two large men falling through.

“Sorry we’re late!” shouts Justin, at the same time as Adam bellows, “SURPRISE!”

“Boys!” says Eric in the iciest voice anyone has ever heard come out of his mouth. Everyone turns to look at him in terror. “You seem to be only carrying four boxes. Didn’t I say there was two cakes and three pies?” Shitty puts Larissa down and reflexively steps back from Eric.

“Well, you _see_ ,” starts Adam. “There was this fuck-off huge eagle, right?” Eric crosses his arms and taps his foot. “U-uh, and, uh, we were trying to protect the food, but then there was this…” Adam frantically steps on Justin’s foot.

“Mountain lion!” interjects Justin. “There was a mountain lion. And it took the pie while we were trying to fend off the eagle.”

“Yeah.”

Eric looks at them both with a cold stare that Larissa is downright jealous of. Nobody dares move, even when a streamer detaches from where it’s taped to a cabinet and swoops down to the floor. “A mountain lion took my pie? While you were fighting an eagle?”

Justin and Adam look at the floor. Eric tilts his head sweetly. The silence is ominous.

Adam breaks first. “Justin dropped the box on the ground and killed the fucking pie!”

“Dude!” says Justin crossly. “You were the one that ate it off the floor!”

“I didn’t want to waste one of Eric’s pies!” retorts Adam. “That’s, like, blasphemy, or illegal or something! I didn’t want to get arrested!”

“Boys!” Eric says again. He doesn’t yell, but somehow it’s louder than their collective bickering, cutting through the noise with terrifying sweetness. They both look at him sheepishly. “I forgive you for dropping the pie. But did you really think I’d buy that a mountain lion took it? I’m not a fool.” But he smiles at the end of it, and it’s obvious there’s no malice in his words.

Adam and Justin look so relieved they could cry. “And there’s still two good pies left,” says Justin. “And the cakes as well. And, really, four desserts between six people is _probably_ going to be enough, right?”

Eric’s mouth twists into a grin. “Maybe barely.”

The party is nice.

Despite Eric’s tutting, the remaining desserts are exceptional, as always– “I’m so _frustrated_ with how I rushed the crust, though!” Eric frets, and Larissa gently punches him in the shoulder and says, “Dude.”– and Shitty disappears for a minute and comes back with some kind of drink that smells vaguely dangerous but tastes great, and everyone exchanges small gifts– though none can really compare to The Bedazzled Baloney Pony, as Shitty has dubbed it. Everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’, and then assorted Christmas carols, and then dirty versions of Christmas carols, and then they’re all laughing too much to sing any more.

The end of the year feels like a major achievement– one semester of community college down, and they’ve all survived. They passed their shared class, for varying definitions of the word ‘pass’– Eric scraped through by the skin of his teeth, while Justin got a mark so high it nearly made Dupont genuinely smile– and now they have the winter break to unwind. Larissa and Eric are staying in Adam’s enormous NHL star bachelor pad because the dorms are closing and he frankly has more guest rooms than he knows what to do with, and also because he’s going with Justin and Justin’s cousin up to Toronto to visit the Oluransis for Christmas, and he’d rather not go through the trouble of finding a reliable house sitter. Larissa and Eric assured him that he wouldn’t miss out on any wild parties. Jack is… doing something. Probably. He said that he’d “be around”, though whether that means he’s planning on staying at his apartment for three straight weeks or is going to actually do something enjoyable is up for debate.

“Come have Christmas dinner with me and Larissa!” Eric says to him over a cup of ‘non-alcoholic’ holiday punch. “It’ll be really low-key. Shitty’s coming, and we’ll have a great time, and it just wouldn’t be fair for you to be all alone for the holidays, Jack.”

Larissa stands next to him and grins. “We’re going to steal Adam’s Netflix account and fuck up the suggestion algorithms.”

For his part, Jack doesn’t pull his grandpa routine and pretend he’s never heard of Netflix. “My parents are coming down, actually. Just for the week of Christmas, though. We usually do that as a family,” he says, as if he isn’t talking about _Bad Bob_ and _Alicia Zimmermann_ , the collective cause of Larissa’s bisexual awakening. “You can come and have dinner at mine, though? I’m sure they’d love to meet you both.” He blinks. “And Shitty too, I suppose. I’ll have to talk to him about what he considers appropriate dinner wear.”

And if that isn’t just the icing on the damn cake. Larissa is going to get to spend the holidays not only with her friends (save for Justin and Adam, but they’re going to have a grand old time canoodling in Canada), but she’s also going to have dinner with _Jack’s parents_.

“That sounds great!” Eric says, and Larissa nods emphatically, and Jack smiles in relief, as though there was even the slightest chance they’d have something better to do.

They eat, they drink, they be merry. Winter is here, but Larissa feels warm.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

So. Eric is one hundred percent absolutely _not_ freaking out about having dinner with Jack’s parents. Not in the slightest. What gave you that idea?

He’s sitting on the floor of Adam’s kitchen, hyperventilating into a bag of chocolate chips he’s holding in a death grip, and there’s already four stress pies sitting on the counter. It’s half past five on Christmas day. They’re leaving for Jack’s apartment in fifteen minutes.

Jack’s apartment, where _Jack’s parents_ already are. The rich and famous and beautiful parents of his rich and famous and beautiful friend.

“Larissa!” he shrieks, putting down the chocolate chips before he grinds them to dust. “What if they don’t like me!”

Instead of the carefully calm reassurance he was seeking, it’s Shitty who pops his head in the doorframe and grins back at him. “Dude! Why the hell wouldn’t they like you?” He’s wearing a shirt indoors, which Eric has come to regard as unexpected and a little freaky, not to mention the fact that he hadn’t even heard Shitty _arrive_. How did he get in?

“How did you get in?” Eric asks. “I didn’t hear the door open. And Larissa’s been in the bathroom getting her face ready for twenty minutes.”

“Never mind all that,” Shitty says. “I say again: why the hell would _anyone on this entire earth_ not like you?” He leans casually against the wall, and then seems to properly see how anxious Eric obviously is, and walks around the table so he can crouch down next to him. “Seriously, are you actually worried about this?” Eric notices how his voice goes a bit softer and smiles thinly.

“I– I mean, yes?” he says, looking at the floor. “Like, this is _Bad Bob Zimmermann_ we’re talking about. And Alicia! They’re both– you know!” He waves a hand frustratedly. “All famous an’ amazing an’… used to better company than some gay boy from the South who dropped out of college.” His damn traitorous voice breaks on the last word and he blinks furiously so he doesn’t cry like he always does.

Shitty leans a shoulder into his gently. “Dude. No kidding? But you’re actually one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. You’ve got fuckin’ hospitality out the wazoo, and great dinner stories to entertain them, and, what, five dessert courses?” He smiles and prods Eric’s knee until it coaxes a smile in return. “You’ll do fine. Besides, they agreed to this even after hearing all the undoubtedly awful gossip about us that Jack’s been feeding them for months. If they’ve heard about how many times their son has seen my dick, and they _still_ want to eat a meal with me, they can’t be too bad.”

For a moment it’s silent, and then Eric sniffs and says, “Okay,” and then, “I really do want to know how you got into the house.” He dabs at his eyes while Shitty laughs. “You could have been a burglar exploiting flaws in the security!”

“Does it count as breaking and entering if you guys left the door open?” Shitty says, grinning.

Larissa leans into the doorway. “Hey, Shits,” she says, unsurprised. “You ready to leave? I’ll be walking extra slow ‘cause of these fuckin’ heels.” She’s about two inches taller than normal and wearing a stunning black dress that shimmers purple in the light; she looks beautiful, and when Eric tells her as much, she blushes and mutters something like thanks.

It’s kind of weird seeing her all dressed up, actually. Eric’s gotten used to the two of them sitting around the house in comfortable clothes (even shorts, thanks to Adam’s absolutely _wonderful_ central heating system), which usually means paint-stained shirts or singlets for Larissa. It’s just so much easier to lounge around and watch all of Freaks and Geeks in your old baggy clothes, and there’s no point in dressing up if you aren’t going out or seeing anyone.

And they haven’t exactly gone out much so far. They’ve binged on Netflix, properly broken in Adam’s enormous kitchen, had a small snowball fight in the backyard, and painted each other’s nails. Normally, Eric would be doing his utmost to appreciate both the Midwestern winter and the fancy kitchen he has access to, but something about living with a friend– even temporarily– has dulled that need into a lazy flutter of Christmas cookies every few days. It’s nice, though. Larissa being here seems to ground him a bit; she’s so naturally quiet that he can either chatter away and fill the room with his own words or join her in silence for hours on end and feel just as comfortable either way. This winter break, languid as it is, will probably crystallise in his mind as one of the best of his lives. He’d always been anxious about making the most of his time, creating enough memories to write over the ones of Madison he’d rather not think about; the realisation that memories of quiet days are just as solid as ones of hectic socialising is a comfort.

So no matter how this evening goes, it’ll still be part of a pretty great winter break.

Eric takes a deep breath on the floor. He’ll be fine. “Oh,” he says when he realises he’s not even dressed properly. “Just lemme go get changed and I’ll be ready. Can you, um, box up these pies? They sort of just… happened. They’ll make good gifts for the Zimmermanns, I suppose.” Larissa salutes and snaps to action, and when she walks past Eric where he’s getting up, she gently hip-checks him.

“Alright?” she murmurs quietly. Eric nods and smiles gratefully. “I know they’re gonna love you. You’re irresistable.” The way she says it, so self-assured and truthful, even makes Eric believe it a bit more himself. He bumps her back on his way out.

So he fills his lungs with all the confidence he can bear and goes to put on his nice navy suit and red bowtie (because it never hurts to have a touch of festivity) and tells his reflection that he’s going to have a great time and the Zimmermanns will love him and that Jack won’t suddenly hate him and that his pies are _delicious_ , dammit!

.

Jack opens the door and immediately says, “Thank god you’re wearing pants.”

Shitty beams. “The sacrifices I make for our friendship, brah.”

Jack’s dad– “Call me Bob, son. Or Bobby. Oh! Call me Big Z, I’ve been trying to make that catch on for ages.”– benevolently doesn’t make fun of Eric for calling him ‘Mr Jack’s Dad’ when they’re shaking hands. Alicia isn’t as infallible– she says “That’s Mrs _Jack’s Mom_ to you!” when Eric calls her Mrs Zimmermann, but smiles to soften the blow into a gentle chirp. Bob grins and bodily shakes Shitty’s hand when they’re introduced, because apparently he’d been really excited to meet this man who’d persuaded his son to join a study group for a class he didn’t even take. Both of Jack’s parents even _call_ him Shitty, which throws Eric for a loop. It’s weird to hear such famous people say things like, “Shitty, you just _have_ to see Jack’s baby photos,” but it adds a layer of familiarity and warmth to the gathering that he’s glad for.

Dinner is a roast which Eric is pretty sure Jack bought from the supermarket (honestly! He’d have helped if Jack had _asked_!), but it tastes fantastic anyway. Eric thinks that a lot of things taste fantastic when you’re sitting at a table with your friends.

“Enlighten me,” Bob says when dinner is packed away and dessert is waiting in the wings. “You all met because of a study group?”

“Yes sir,” Eric replies. “Adam and Justin– they would have loved to come, but they’re up in Toronto with Justin’s family– they got together to study for French one day, and then Adam invited me, and then Shitty, um… was absorbed into it. Larissa saw us from a distance and decided– for some reason I’ll never fully understand, lord– that she wanted in?”

“If we’re being honest here, it’s mostly because I wanted to paint Shitty,” Larissa adds in. “But then I hung out with you and it was like, dude, these guys are _so fun_. Like, don’t get me wrong,” she says, smirking, “you’re all idiots, but you’re my idiots.”

“Awww!” Shitty grins.

“And then Shitty invited Jack to join us one day, even though Jack wasn’t taking the class we were studying for–”

“Torturing, more like,” Jack says quietly with a smile. “I don’t know how any of you passed a single speaking exam before I turned up.”

“Oh, because your Québécois mouth is any better for learning proper French,” Eric says, raising an eyebrow. “The first time you tried to help me with a practice conversation I heard as far as _je_ and the rest was just a mess of broken grammar rules and missing letters.”

“It’s a different dialect, Eric!” Jack laughs. “I told you all from the start that it’s nothing like actual French, but you bullied me into helping you anyway. Blame Shitty.”

“Hey!” Shitty protests. He points a napkin threateningly at Jack. “ _You_ agreed to hang out with us.”

“I think we all know whose fault this _really_ is,” Larissa says, and fixes Alicia with a look. “Miss Zimmermann, for bringing this beautiful French-mangling history nerd into the world.”

“Don’t forget Rad Dad Bob, the main Zimmer- _man_!” Shitty agrees. He puts down the napkin and raises his empty wine glass in a toast. “To the Zimmermanns! Every single goddamn one of them.”

Bob smiles, and says, “To family and friendship,” and everyone clinks glasses, and then he leans in and says, “Have we waited long enough for it to be polite? Can we _please_ get stuck into that glorious looking pie?”

Two pies come out onto the lovely tablecloth; the other two are sitting, tied with careful bows, on the kitchen counter for Bob and Alicia to enjoy at their leisure. Judging by the speed at which the present two are devoured, though, it might be less leisure and more frenzy. (Eric takes it as a compliment, though.)

The after-dinner conversation is animated and frequented by bursts of laughter; Eric finds himself smiling near-constantly and not even stuttering at all when he looks right at Alicia’s face to talk to her. She’s so nice, and Bob is so easygoing, that it’s almost as simple to talk to Jack’s parents as it is to talk to Jack himself. Eric talks about pie recipes and his favourite celebrities (he has a minor heart attack when Alicia says she’s had lunch with Beyoncé more than once, but it’s fine, he’s fine, he isn’t going to do something like die from excitement at being one degree of separation from _Beyonc_ _é_ in front of his friend’s parents) and Alicia tells stories about Bob courting her and some behind-the-scenes antics from her career as a model.

When she (inevitably) gets on to the subject of Jack, her eyes soften, and she says, “I’m so happy he’s happy. You’re all so good for him. He’s so… so lucky to have friends like you.” Eric feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and he nods and says he’s lucky to have a friend like Jack, and Alicia smiles secretly back at him and kisses his forehead.

“Okay, time for me to be an embarrassing mother,” she says, when everyone is finishing up their third (or fifth, for Shitty and Bob) glass of wine. “Has any lucky person down here caught my baby’s eye yet? Larissa, please tell me you’re vetting all potential partners.”

Jack buries his face in his hands where he’s sitting on the floor next to the armchair Eric is in. “ _Maman_ ,” he whines. “I’m twenty-five.” Shitty and Larissa snicker in the background; Eric hides his mouth and pretends he isn’t laughing when he shoots Jack a sympathetic look.

(But.

It’s bitter and petty and Eric will probably take it to his grave, but there’s a small part of him which is angry at Jack for getting such amazing and accepting parents. He’s not actually angry at _him_ – and he doesn’t let it colour any of his friendly feelings towards Jack– but he’s angry at the draw of fate that gave Jack a comfortable home where he could be himself and not need to hide, when Eric had repressed parts of himself so thoroughly he hadn’t let himself say out loud to anyone that he was gay until the worst time imaginable.

It’s unfair, that some people have that luck. That some people don’t have to constantly examine everything they say to their parents so it doesn’t arouse suspicion; that they can have a conversation with their parents and not bite back some vital essence of themselves. That when Eric finally had the courage to be himself, it just ruined everything again.

Obviously Eric knows that Jack’s life isn’t perfect– he’s not shallow enough to think that being accepted by your parents makes every other problem go away in an instant, or that a safe home environment negates the homophobia in sport culture. But he thinks about the way that Jack and his father laugh in exactly the same cadence, and how Alicia unabashedly expounds about how proud she is of her son, and he feels a sting deep down inside his chest.)

“I know!” Alicia says. “But you’ll always be my baby, and I want to make sure my baby is having fun, and, if you _have_ got someone, that you’re staying safe–”

“ _No_ , maman!” Jack says, waving his hands to stop her talking. “No boyfriends, no girlfriends, no anythings. Please don’t say anything else about staying safe. Shitty’s already calling himself the Condom Fairy, maman, I’ve got a surplus of _safety_.”

Everyone laughs, but it’s not unkind, and Jack concedes a smile and rolls his eyes, which means he isn’t feeling laughed at. Alicia kisses him on the cheek, and then Shitty kisses him on the mouth, and _then_ Bob goes and gets the baby pictures and it’s laughter all round for another hour; it’s warm and it’s comfortable and Eric knocks his knee into Jack’s shoulder and smiles and he feels a warmth in his heart.

_To family and friendship_ , he thinks, and amends to himself: _family, friendship, and love_.

Christmas is over all too soon, and the new semester steadily looms until it collapses onto them and pulls them back into the undertow of school and general Greendale shenanigans, but Eric thinks about that winter’s night for a long, long time afterwards, until it stays in his mind, framed on the mantelpiece next to all the other moments he treasures with his friends.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

About midway through January, on a cold blue-black morning where everyone sits shivering in the study room and bemoans the tilt of the earth, Shitty kicks open the door, wearing a floral crop top, cutoff denim shorts, and mismatching flip flops, and hollers, “Everyone move in with me!” His arms are raised like he’s celebrating a goal.

“Shitty, it’s the middle of winter,” says Eric. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Winter is a social construct,” says Shitty, not moving from the doorway or changing his stance in the slightest. “I’m _serious_ , guys, move in with me.”

“Okay,” says Jack, after a moment.

“Oh my god, _please_ ,” says Larissa. “As long as I can paint it.” Shitty beams and gives her a thumbs up.

“Move into that safety hazard you live in?” frowns Justin. “I’m pretty sure there’s raccoons in the walls and also the attic.”

“Yeah,” says Shitty, “but they’re chill, they don’t attack me as long as I leave some food lying around for them. C’mon! It’s lonely living in a condemned frat house by yourself, man, and you guys are my best friends, and I want to live with you, and the Dean doesn’t even make me pay rent. It’ll be so fun!”

Adam purses his lips. “So I move from my super nice, huge, _clean_ place in a good neighbourhood to a derelict shack on Greendale property, on the basis that we’re besties?”

“Yes!” says Shitty. “Exactly! Adam, think of the parties! The Dean has, like, ten dances a month, and my place is the perfect catchment for disappointed young adults searching for better evening entertainment than an STD-themed ball. We could throw _the_ most epic keggers, my dude.”

“You had me at _parties_ , bro,” says Adam, nodding, with a sincere hand held over his heart. “My neighbours are all so boring. One of them _actually_ owns a folding laundry rack.”

Reaching over to sling an arm across Adam’s shoulder, Justin nods slowly. “I mean, wherever you go, homie of my heart, I go also. So. I’m not about to let you move into a biohazard without backup.” He and Adam share a grin and fistbump. “And it’ll be nice to give Ava her spare room back, eh? I am in, Shitty my friend.”

“Eric? Bittiest of bros?” questions Shitty. “You’ve been quiet so far. Is your fragile Georgian constitution sending you into cryogenic sleep?”

“What?” says Eric. “No, no, I was just. Thinking. I… don’t know. Don’t you worry that we might start hating each other if we’re together all the time?” His eyes are downcast. He thinks: _Don’t you think you might start hating me if you have to deal with me more than this?_

“Dude,” says Shitty impassionedly. “Nothing i this world could make me hate a single bone in your body. Any of you. Like, I know we started out as a study group, but I really think you guys are the best people I’ve ever met.” He grins toothily at the room. Eric still won’t meet his eye, and Shitty adds in a singsong tone, “You can use the kitchen any time you liiike.”

“Oh my god,” Eric gasps, wide-eyed. “I can make us brunch _every day_.”

Shitty claps his hands together. “‘Swawesome!” he grins. “You’re all welcome to move your stuff in whenever you like. But, uh, there’s this spot on the upstairs floor that will, like, literally disintegrate if you step on it, so I’ll be there to supervise and make sure nobody gets hurt.”

“Or,” says Eric, “ _before_ that, we could actually make it somewhere we aren’t collectively likely to catch plague and die horribly? Y’know, clean it up, get some repairs done.” He fixes Shitty with a glare. “Evict the raccoons.”

“What? No! The raccoons are my bros!” cries Shitty, but everyone else around the table is nodding assent to Eric’s terms.

“I’m pretty sure there’s undiscovered ecosystems in the bathrooms, Shits,” says Justin. “I don’t really feel like getting creeped on by some hyper-evolved bacteria while I’m showering.”

Jack and Adam say, at the same time, “I’ll pay for repairs,” and then frown at each other.

“Listen, you both have NHL salaries behind you,” says Eric placatingly. “And you don’t have anything to _prove_ or whatever nonsense might be going on in those giant-and-or-Canadian heads of yours. So how about we _all_ pitch in? I mean, we’re all gonna be living there. Right?” He brings his hands up in a sounds-fair gesture. “No need to squabble over money.”

Truthfully, he has no idea whether the tiny current of resentment Adam seems to be focusing at Jack is a) reciprocated, b) justified, or c) even real. But Eric is good at reading a situation, and the slightest hint of hostility makes him fold inwards a little, because– that’s how he had to deal with things in Georgia. He wasn’t physically strong enough to fight back when things turned ugly, so he had to hone his emotional senses and make himself small and unnoticeable at the first sign of danger. He’s used to it. It’s just– a bit scary, to think that it might be everywhere, even in this group of friends he’s found ingrained in his heart after months of a stutter-start routine. Because if it can be kindled even here, then who’s to say it won’t spark from two people to two more to everyone until it’s just a fight waiting to happen?

So he doesn’t want arguments to start. _Sue_ him.

Adam’s frown lasts a split-second longer, and then he lets a sigh out his nose and says, good-naturedly, “Okay, but I’m paying the exterminator, because like hell is anyone but me and Justin taking the attic.” Justin fistbumps him. Eric exhales in relief.

“Okay,” says Shitty, seemingly oblivious to the simmering situation Eric just smoothed over. “If you all want to deface the Haus like that, then _fine_ , but I have one condition.”

Everyone looks at him expectantly.

“Mother. Fuckin’. 80s cleaning montage.”

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

So Adam provides the Spotify Premium and Eric provides the speakers and Shitty provides the over-enthusiastic vocals and they get to work. Justin, Adam, and Eric tackle the upper floor and attic together, and Jack, Larissa, and Shitty himself buckle down and scrub the ground floor. (Nobody really wants to go into the basement. They might not come back up.)

“WE BUILT THIS SHITTY!”

“Shits, I will not hesitate to burn the couch if you don’t shut the hell up.”

“WE BUILT THIS SHITTY ON ROOOCK AND ROOO– What! No!”

Shitty gets down from where he’d been perched on the kitchen counter, ostensibly spraying the mould on top of the kitchen cabinets. He had _actually_ been emptying all of his hidey-holes of weed before the exterminators got there, but nobody else needs to know that. He puts the cloth and multi-purpose kitchen surface spray down on the table huffily.

“That couch is a legacy, Jack!” he says, deeply wounded that his best friend could _ever_ blaspheme so horribly. “It’s fate! There was a green couch like that at the Haus at Samwell, so it’s, like, a _legal and moral necessity_ to have one at Haus 2.0. Every incarnation of the Haus needs a green couch.”

Jack is nonplussed. “It’s actually the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. I’m scared to sit on it. I might contract the Black Plague.”

“I don’t care!” says Shitty, dramatically turning his back. “The couch stays. Steam-clean the fucking foundations of this building if you need to, but the couch _stays_.”

He has a few arguments like that over the next few days.

From Justin: “Dude, no kidding? I sat on that couch once? I got shingles on my literal asshole. Please throw out that abomination.”

From Adam: “I think there’s about a thousand roaches living in that thing. That, or it’s actually hollow, and there’s a fucking murderer with every single infectious disease possible and a fucking vengeance squatting in your furniture, planning on killing us all while we sleep.”

From Eric: “The moment you turn your back, Shitty Knight. Just you wait. I’ll kill that couch if it’s the last thing I do.”

From Larissa: “Hah. Dude, do you think it’d actually burn if we set it on fire? Maybe it’d explode. Who knows what the fuck it’s even made of.”

He _almost_ is convinced by that last argument. He does like seeing things explode.

It’s a point of contention over the three days that the Hauswarming takes, and Shitty digs his heels in whenever he can– because it’s honestly a bit daunting to know that his friends are willing to invest so much time and effort and money in his little shithouse; and, even more so, that they’re doing it so they can _live with him_. It’s not out of pity or anything like that; it’s so they can all be a stupid happy family under one roof, and Eric can make them big breakfasts with pancakes and Adam can walk around and narrate everyone’s life in his David Attenborough impression and Justin can destroy everyone at Rainbow Road like it’s no big deal and Jack can watch historical documentaries and genuinely take notes on them and Larissa can paint on all the walls and fill the space with her unabashed self.

So in the end the exterminator comes and callously turns Shitty’s friends the raccoons out of their home; they pay someone in the construction course at Greendale to come and repair the upstairs floor so that nobody ends up falling through the exceedingly brittle wood; Eric and Larissa go down into the basement together and come back up stained with grease and oil and something else, but they end up fixing the lightbulb down there at least; Jack surreptitiously pays for a new shower in the second bathroom and Shitty pretends not to notice how shiny and chrome it is.

But at the same time, the green couch stays. The window in the kitchen doesn’t get fixed. The curtains are thrown out, but they’re replaced by the Greendale flag that Shitty’s had flying proudly on his front lawn for months. He wins the little victories, the ones that make this place _really_ feel like home.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

_iii. but i love you more than words can say / i can’t count the reasons i should stay_

On Valentine’s Day– a Sunday, thankfully– Shitty comes downstairs in a homemade Cupid outfit and spends the day crying over how much he loves his friends.

Eric gets a card with a pie on the front, which makes him smile, and on the inside it says _You’re the bravest person I know, and you make the best food I’ve ever tasted, including the stuff at my family’s fancy-ass banquets, and you deserve all the happiness in the goddamn world. Happy V-day!_

(He cries, but refuses to hug Shitty until he puts on something other than a diaper.)

 

Jack doesn’t get a card, but only because Shitty couldn’t figure out how to draw the concept of history on construction paper. Instead, Shitty decides to give him a more physical present in the form of midday cuddles. He splays across Jack’s lap on the clean armchair in the den and wraps his long limbs around his best friend for the better part of an hour.

“Jack,” Shitty croons. “Light of my life.”

“Stop.”

“Fire of my loins.”

“Don’t get your loins anywhere near me.”

“Embers of my secondary sex characteristics.”

“I hate you,” Jack says, but he’s smiling.

“Love you too, bro.”

 

Adam and Justin are harder in that Shitty can’t picture a perfect Valentine’s Day for either of them without the other, so Shitty gets them a big card with his best rendition of the two of them hugging on the front. It says _I can’t imagine life without the two biggest and softest platonic bros I know. I know your friendship is gonna stand the test of time and will probably be written about in a book about the history of the bestest bros - plus, you’re fucking amazing people and I love you both. Happy V-day!_

(He doesn’t really know why they give him such a Smirk when they’re reading it, but he’s too overwhelmed with how much love he’s feeling. He hugs them both at the same time and gets caught up in a proper double bro sandwich hug, which is fucking _awesome_.

 

Larissa’s card (emblazoned with a paint palette and art supplies) says _To the best and bro-est bro I’ve ever met_ , and then it has some truly sappy shit that she blinks at, and it finishes with something that she blinks even harder at, and she ends up crying, and so does Shitty, and she holds the card close to her chest and smiles softer than he’s ever seen before.

 

The Greendale Human Being might steal his thunder at classes tomorrow, but Shitty _owns_ Valentine’s Day right now.

He loves his friends, so so so much, and he’s overjoyed to know them and have them in his life. Not only that, but they want _him_ around, too, and they don’t seem to be leaving any time soon. Their group started weirdly, maybe, but it’s grown into something bigger than all of them. And none of them would trade it for the world.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Life at Greendale almost feels normal, now. Of course, it’ll never be _actually_ normal, not even close, but it’s not as shocking to see a few members of the Spanish study group engaged in political warfare be be elected to student government, or for the Dean to drop into their study room so he can test-run his outfits before he shows them to the Spanish study group, or–

On second thought, maybe the only thing actually wrong with Greendale is the study group. Almost all of the weird stuff that happens is either because of or exacerbated by them.

One day, the Dean comes into their study room and says, “I’m so glad the study group slash unexpected lifelong friendship effect is spreading,” and Eric has to take a moment to recover from the implication that one day they might be the group everyone talks about in angry whispers.

It’ll be fine, probably. They’re not _that_ weird.

(Except for Shitty. Eric is holding out judgement on whether or not he’ll turn out to be some kind of sleeper agent who’s going to take over the school or something.)

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

As birthdays go, Larissa’s is quiet. They go to a bar, everyone else pays for her drinks, and she pretends not to cry into Jack’s shirt when he gives her a set of really nice watercolours. She punches Shitty on the arm when he gives an emotional toast, but raises her glass to it all the same.

.

As a contrast, Justin’s birthday, a few days after Larissa’s, is _wild_. Adam gets him a pie (made by himself, honey peach, burnt on the edges), a trip to the aquarium, and hires an a capella group to follow him around all day and provide a dramatic musical-style narration of his actions. It’s hilarious, and probably usurps the Spanish study group for most disruptive activity of the day, which Adam takes great pride in.

He even organises the obligatory birthday kegster, held in the Haus and attended by almost every of-age Greendale student, as well as Ava and Bee, and they let fucking _loose_ in celebration of the most amazing bro in the world turning twenty-three, because there’s nothing Adam would rather celebrate. It outranks any NHL party he’s ever been to, including the one where he beat Kris Letang at beer pong.

(And if he pulls Justin aside later, privately, and whispers some soft words into his ear, then that just makes it a better birthday.)

.

Eric’s 21st birthday comes around, and he expects to maybe get some baking supplies, or a new pair of headphones. Some alcohol from Shitty, probably.

Jack gets him an _oven_.

(Granted, it’s in the Haus, but it’s undeniably for him.)

They all go out drinking that night, and Eric looks at Jack across the table, sees the smile held level and even, and thinks: _This boy_.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

And all too suddenly it’s the end of the year and Eric’s dressed in a modest cowboy outfit that _no, Adam, I didn’t already have in my closet because the South ain’t the damn Wild West_ , and they’re sitting on the grass outside eating dubious meat and gimmicky-named ice cream, and he looks around at their odd circle and thinks about how he never would have imagined that he’d find people he loved so, so much at Greendale. Or anywhere, for that matter. (Greendale just seems a little less statistically likely than anywhere else on earth, though.)

“Did you want some more Salted Caramel Shootout, Justin?” Adam says from where he’s sprawled over Justin’s lap. They’re wearing frankly appalling matching ten-gallon hats, which means that they both have brightly embroidered lettering around the brims that say BEST BROS IN THE WEST. Adam holds his ice cream up to Justin’s mouth and wiggles it tantalisingly.

“Only if you’ll finish the rest of my Frontier Fudge,” replies Justin, and he ducks his head to devour the cone in front of his face. Adam gleefully takes Justin’s from his hand and eats it with a similar enthusiasm.

If Eric is honest, he’s not entirely sure whether the two are dating. It seems like a bit of a faux pas to just _ask_. Jack and Shitty and Larissa apparently share the sentiment, because nobody has commented on the pair’s growing closeness over the year, until a sight like today’s– Adam with his head resting on Justin’s leg, humming contentedly while Justin cards one hand through his hair and absently checks his phone with the other– is the norm. Nobody’s caught them at anything further than relaxed cuddling, though, and it’s really hard to tell what counts as a term of endearment for them. (Last week, Jack had covered for Justin when he needed an extra fifty cents to pay for his chocolate milk, and he’d been called _you beautiful flawless adonis of a man_ for his troubles.)

It’s sweet, whatever it is. They’re so happy spending time together that it genuinely seems like they were made for each other, in all their combined obnoxious bro-ish glory. They finish each other's sentences (and sandwiches, and chicken tenders as well for that matter), drape themselves across the other no matter what activity is being participated in (notable incidents include Adam glued to the television for the season six premiere of Game of Thrones and Justin laying himself, catlike, across his lap; Justin debating with Shitty about how many kegsters is too many to throw in a week and Adam coming up behind Justin and threading his arms around his middle and leaning his head onto Justin’s shoulder; and a number of impromptu wrestling-slash-cuddling matches held everywhere from the kitchen to Eric’s bedroom), they play off each other in the best ways possible– they genuinely seem like, cliche though it is, actual soulmates.

Now, Eric smiles at them while they stare into each other’s eyes (“Dude, Justin, you have some Colonial Cookies and Cream on your nose, bro.”) and thinks about how much he wants that.

He’s not _jealous_ , per se, except– he really wants that. He wants to be able to hold hands with someone and lean easily into their shoulder and brush their hair out of their stupid blue eyes and sleep tucked into their chest at night and kiss them across breakfast with both of them tasting like cinnamon and french toast. It’s the end of the year, so he figures he’s allowed to think about things like that.

And _so what_ if his romantic fantasies are coincidentally all about the same silhouette with awful boy-band bangs and wide shoulders and a jaw that smiles softer than you’d ever expect? He’s only human.

But he can’t pretend that his feelings are purely aesthetic-based. He and Jack ( _okay_ , there, he said it) get along astoundingly well for two people as different as they are. He’s easy to talk to, and he’s a good listener, which is good when you’re someone like Eric who talks as an outlet for nerves; but at the same time, he’s able to keep up with conversation and strike with unexpected witticisms at the perfect time. He’s caring, and kind, and, once the initial frostiness of his overall friendship with the group had worn off, fits remarkable quickly into their oddball family, filling the niche of the responsible one who dissuades Adam and Justin from setting things on fire, or listens to Shitty’s endless rants, or sits in silence with Larissa for hours on end, or goes to cafes with Eric and makes fun of him for making the most of pumpkin spice latte season. He balances out all of them well. He’s… he’s so much _more_ than Eric thought he would be.

And the problem is that Eric is running out of reasons to keep putting off these feelings.

See, if Jack were straight, everything would be so much easier. He could be written off as unattainable, and after a while, the crush would peter out into a close friendship, and (as painful and heartbreaking as Eric knows it is) Eric would make himself be happy with that.

But he _isn’t_ straight, and he’s as out as anyone really can be, and he’s never shown any sign of rescinding his spontaneous coming out, so, at least on that front, there’s _possibility_.

Eric has known that from the start, though, and he’s good at denying himself, so he falls to other reasons:

Jack would never like him as a person! They’re too incompatible! Eric is sunny and open and talks a mile a minute and makes it a priority to know everyone’s favourite flavour of pie _just because_ ; Jack is cold and quiet and closed and, well, _Jack_.

But of course he had to go and turn out to get along spectacularly well with Eric– with all of Eric’s friends, even, ruining yet another avenue of denial. It’s cruel of the universe to just dangle this man in front of his gay little heart.

So: maybe Jack likes someone else! But Justin and Adam have their… _thing_ , and Shitty and Larissa have their… _thing_ , and Eric is pretty sure Jack doesn’t really talk to many other people, and certainly doesn’t have any other friends as close as their group.

So: maybe Eric isn’t Jack’s type! But they’ve all played Truth or Dare (though never to the same level as that one night in the blanket fort), and Jack had noted “probably blond hair and not tall” as a brief approximation of his history/type, which made it necessary for Eric to leave the room and get another beer so he wouldn’t do something foolish.

So: maybe all of it lines up, and Jack still doesn’t like Eric, because things aren’t always that neat! There’s no inevitability in love, so even if Eric is one of Jack’s closest friends, and his type, and one of the few viable romantic options, it doesn’t mean that Jack will or does like Eric.

It _can’t_ , is what Eric means.

The thing is–

Eric knows that this isn’t his story. He doesn’t get the guy, he doesn’t have a good relationship with his family, he doesn’t graduate summa cum laude from a prestigious school. Hell, he feels like he’s skating on thin ice already with this seemingly perfect group of friends. And that’s exactly why he won’t let himself really, truly want for something more: because he might be gambling too much. Because he might end up in a worse place than he started.

Jack glances over at him with a smile. Eric wants to cry.

Just when he thinks his feelings are fit to burst right out of his chest, the Dean calls over the crowd, “Alright, let’s gather round,” and everyone lethargically gets to their feet and ambles towards the growing mass of Western-outfitted Greendale students. Jack offers Eric a hand but he smiles tightly and stands up without touching a single finger on Jack’s ridiculous handsome hand.

At least the Dean up on stage is a reasonable excuse to deliberately stop thinking about Jack.

“Okay, a couple of announcements,” says the Dean. There’s a kind of creepy looking ice cream mascot near him. “I want to thank Pistol Patty’s Cowboy Creamery for sponsoring our end of the year picnic.” The ice cream waves a hand and the crowd at large applauds gratefully; the ice cream _had_ been good, despite the slightly nauseating puns. The Dean grins at the positive attitude of the crowd, which is fair, because crowds at Greendale have an even chance of becoming angry mobs with very little provocation. “Now, free ice cream and that one guy having a heart attack aren’t the only surprises today.”

A feeling of trepidation settles low in Eric’s stomach.

“We’re gonna end this year with a quick game of Paintball Assassin!”

And _there_ it is.

“Lord, are they doing the paintball thing _again_? Didn’t anyone learn?” Eric says with a sigh.

“Again?” says Adam, frowning. “Learn from what?” Eric shakes his head and just gestures towards where the Dean is smiling out at a still-pleased crowd. There’s far too much clapping for what is sure to be a repeat performance of last year’s modern war games.

“Now,” the Dean continues, finally having the good grace to look a little repentant, “last year’s big mistake was _way_ too valuable a prize, and I've been assured–” he gestures to the uncanny ice cream, who gets up on stage and gives a little perfunctory bow– “that _this_ year will be different. So take it away, Pistol Patty!” The crowd offers another round of applause to the dead-eyed mascot.

“Howdy, folks!” it says in an ominous falsetto. “There’s only one rule: last man standing gets the prize. There’s your guns–” it gesticulates towards a cloth-covered table and uniformed men pull back the cloth to unveil a veritable arsenal of real-looking weapons– “and here’s the prize.”

Everything seems to go oddly still, like the calm before a nuclear explosion.

“One hundred thousand dollars, cash.”

Nobody moves. And then–

“GO NUTS!” shrieks the ice cream, and it sounds an airhorn, and everyone falls over themselves and each other in an effort to do exactly what it said and _go fucking nuts_.

Shitty shouts over the din, “RALLY RALLY RALLY,” and Eric is grabbed solidly around the waist and thrown over someone’s shoulder and then it’s all chaos.

.

“Reconnaissance mission,” says Adam. “We need code names.”

“It’s just paintball, guys,” Jack says. “Like, nobody’s lives are at stake. You know that, right?”

They’re in the empty French room, the strange paint job of which is starting to make a lot more sense in this new context of what sounds like vastly over-the-top paintball wars every year. After the mad rush to find cover from the bloodbath that erupted nigh-instantaneously in the quad, they’d somehow ended up here; none of them are quite sure how, since nobody is sure who was actually leading the group, but it seems to have been a pretty good decision. It was empty when they got here, and all the windows have been deadlocked probably since before the room was actually built. So it’s secure, which is good. Adam and Justin both grabbed an armful of weapons on their way out, and Shitty grabbed Eric, and Jack is pretty sure that Larissa judo flipped someone who tried to aim a gun at her, but everything was moving pretty fast, so he’s not super clear on the details. So: secure home base, enough weapons to go around, all soldiers present and accounted for.

But also, it’s _paintball_. Jack is kind of confused as to why everyone is acting like it’s an actual life and death situation.

(Then again, he’s not _that_ confused. He’s known these people for the better part of a year.)

Justin rolls his eyes. “Okay, Jack is disqualified from codenames. Because he’s boring.”

“Oh.” Jack isn’t sure whether he should be offended or not.

“Boring!”

“Right! Eric Bittle!” Holster calls, like a sergeant.

“Sir!” says Eric, snapping to attention and giving a kind of fluttery salute, as if he isn’t certain on what his hand is supposed to be doing.

“You’re our forward scout! You’ll be moving ahead of the rest of the group, keeping low and quiet, searching for snipers and sentries. If you find any ammo or weapon stashes, commandeer them and pass them back down the line. Take a small weapon– nothing that’s hard to manoeuvre, but we don’t want you unarmed out there. Most importantly: stay unseen.” Adam looks at him very seriously. “You’re a valuable asset– fast, small, flexible– so we’re taking a bit of a risk sending you out there alone. Do you accept your task?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Eric says, puffing out his chest.

“Good! Your code name is–” here Adam pauses and makes a big show of pulling a piece of paper from his vest pocket– “Bitty!”

(Jack wants to ask how long he’s been carrying around a piece of paper with potential code names on it, but it’s even odds that the paper is blank and Adam just wants to make a spectacle out of himself. Which, you know, is what Adam tends to do.)

Eric– Bitty– relaxes into a looser stance and rolls his eyes. “Ha ha,” he says. “Because I’m itty bitty.”

“Hey, don’t be needlessly critical,” says Justin from beside Adam. “We’re going for hockey-style nicknames here, so it’s mostly based on your surname.” He fights down a half-smile unsuccessfully. “But your ittiness and bittiness _were_ also factors.”

Bitty huffs, but moves towards the stack of weapons amiably, picking up a pair of handguns and stowing them in his belt.

“Larissa Duan!” Adam barks. Larissa slips down from the table and slouches over to stand in front of him.

“Mhm?” she says, raising an eyebrow play-defiantly. Adam tuts at her insolence.

“You’re our sentry! We’re relying on you to guard the perimeter of home base from enemy intrusion. If anyone not on the team gets close to the door, _end them_.” He says this with fiery eyes, and Larissa nods with a grin. “You can use whatever weapons suit you. Get somewhere with a good vantage point of the surrounds and make sure you have an escape route if things go south. Do you accept your task?”

“You bet your sweet ass I do,” Larissa says. “Lemme grab one of those awesome sniper rifles.”

“Your code name is Lardo,” says Adam.

“Sweet,” Lardo says, and grabs a gun almost bigger than herself.

“Shitty Redacted Knight!”

Shitty catapults to his feet from where he was prone on the ground, which is something that happens a lot. He’s pretty likely to be on the ground in any given situation. “Dude, yes, dude!”

Adam pauses. “Y’know, you’re kind of a wildcard here,” he says. “There’s a ton of, like, fucking _grenades_ in there. Wanna raid some bases?”

“Hells to the fucking _yes_ , man,” Shitty grins. “Do I get a sweet-ass code name too?”

Chewing his lip, Adam hesitates, then says, “Well, you kind of cheated the system by _already_ having a nickname? I mean, we can come up with something, but I think Shitty is already pretty g by itself.” Justin nods in agreement.

“Baller,” says Shitty. “Lards, come help tie all these grenades to me?”

After Shitty is off to the side, posing like the Vitruvian Man (a frighteningly common comparison, especially with how often Shitty is buck naked) so Lardo can loop ropes around his torso, Justin bounces from his position beside Adam to facing him.

“Suit me up, bro!” he says.

“Justin Oluransi!” Adam says, but there’s too much of a grin in there for it to pass as a sergeant’s yell. “You’re half of our defense. Hang behind Bitty, at a distance, watch his back. If anyone gets past him and tries to make a run for our base– try to head them off before Lardo has to tragically murder them. I’ll be your partner d-man– we ride together, we die together. Sound good?”

“Oh, sir yes _hell fucking yes_ sir!” Justin replies. “Say it, say the _beast_ matching names we got.”

“Our code names are…” Adam pauses for dramatic effect. “ _Ransom and Holster_!”

Ransom about has a conniption over how awesome the names sound.

(To be fair, Jack admits privately, they are pretty cool. They sound like they’d be the best d-pair in the entire NHL.)

When Ransom and Holster are done celebrating their mission, Holster turns to Jack and stares him down. “And _Jack Zimmermann_ ,” he says authoritatively.

“That’s me,” Jack replies. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

Holster sighs with great flourish. “ _God_ , Jack, have a little _flair_. Anyway, you’re on Bitty protection detail. Make sure you have his back out there.” He widens his eyes a little when he says that, and Jack blinks. “Take a dece gun. Maybe a couple of pistols if there’s any to spare. Go use your big hockey butt to win this game.”

“I’ll do my best,” says Jack.

(He wonders, a bit. If Holster telling him to have Bitty’s back was something more. Something that he almost lets himself think about; something that lines up with the way the sun shines a bit brighter around Bitty, how his shoulders unwind and his aches lessen and his smile comes a bit easier when he’s around.

That, or he’s just a really good team player. He has _all_ of his teammate’s backs.)

The table has been stripped pretty clean of guns by now; the biggest one went to Lardo, who has it slung over her back while she finishes decking out Shitty’s entire body in grenades, tied together like fairy lights. Bitty has his handguns, twirling them around his fingers with surprising success. Ransom and Holster both have nearly too many weapons to carry. Jack settles for a nicely sized bright orange sniper rifle; after a moment of thought, he takes a tiny pistol as well, tucking it into his back pocket.

“Everyone prepped?” Ransom asks, stowing guns in his belt, pockets, on his back, in his shoe, and under his hat.

Everyone gives a general yes. Even Jack nods, despite feeling ever sillier about how seriously they’re all taking this (and thus how seriously he’s taking it by proxy).

“Alright,” Holster says. “Let’s wreck shit.”

.

As it turns out, they don’t quite wreck shit. Shit pretty quickly wrecks them.

The moment they’re out the door, Shitty loses his pants and streaks away down the hall, emitting something between a war cry and a yodel. While it _is_ kind of intimidating, it has the side effect of drawing the attention of _everyone_ in the immediate vicinity.

People burst out of the wall of lockers and everyone scatters instantly: Ransom and Holster charge in the same direction as Shitty, barging through a few cowboys with paint guns on their way; Lardo disappears between two bodies and Jack loses sight of her within seconds; Bitty, admirably, shoots two of their ambushers and dances around the corner.

Jack is left with four menacing-looking cowboys in front of him and no teammates whose back he can have.

On autopilot, he shoots them all before they can parse the chaos that just occurred; thank his reflexes, honed by years of hockey, that let him dodge under arms and aim his gun at each chest in turn and keep him from being fake-killed before he can find his friends and regroup.

Distantly, he hears Holster shout, “FUCK THE PLAN! JUST STAY ALIVE!”

So, yeah. The plan definitely goes south pretty quickly.

.

Jack isn’t sure how long it’s been since everyone was separated. He’s running low on ammo, and he’s tired, and he also can’t tell what time it is, but luckily, every encounter he’s had thus far has been with good odds– only one or two other people at a time– so he’s gotten out of it all unscathed. Now, he’s doing his best to find at least _one_ of his stray teammates. It’s kind of weird how well he’s taken to the game– it’s not like he’s going out of his way to win, but he might actually have a fighting chance at the money.

(Not that he needs it. Maybe he’ll give it to Bitty, to buy some fancy new kitchen appliances.)

Walking the halls of Greendale makes for a pretty contemplative mood. Maybe it’s the eerie silence that comes with everybody waiting to fake-kill everyone else, or maybe it’s the inherent quality Greendale has that causes one to reflect on their state of life.

What Jack means to say is this: he’s doing some _important thinking_.

He’s not an idiot. He knows that he has feelings for Bitty, and that there’s a good chance they’re reciprocated; he’s not new to this game of having emotions and being attracted to people. He can read the signs of how everything seems easier when he’s around Bitty, how his voice sounds like coming home after a long day, how he wants to let his hands linger after a friendly touch.

But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to face it. Seeing as most of the part of his brain that deals with romance and romance-adjacent subjects is still caught up in the mess labeled _Parse_ , and he’s spent his life putting hockey first, often to the detriment of his own feelings, it’s hard for him to just fully accept that, yes, he’s probably in love with Eric Bittle.

Something in him is always saying: you don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve to be happy and to love and be loved in return. See what happened with Parse? Bitty deserves someone stable and whole and not fucked up.

But recently, a new part of him is saying: you deserve some things, Jack. You can let yourself be happy. It’s okay to think of yourself first. Hockey isn’t even a factor at this point, you don’t need to let your past dictate your future, you can love someone without it being exactly how it was with Parse.

And on top of that newer, softer voice, is the collective hum of friendship and acceptance he’s found himself surrounded by for most of the past year. It’s Shitty calling him a beaut and kissing his face and cuddling him relentlessly; it’s Lardo sitting in silence with him for hours and not judging him for fiddling rhythmically with the hem of his shirt; it’s Ransom and Holster roping him into schemes and laughing at his jokes and rolling their eyes fondly when he doesn’t know a pop culture reference; it’s Bitty teaching him how to bake and shooting him secret smiles and sitting through history documentaries with him and patiently listening to the spouts of information he can come out with when he’s excited. It’s feeling comfortable around people.

It’s love, really.

So– he tells himself, working through a two-sided debate in his head– would it really be so disastrous to just let himself be happy? To just _try_ with Bitty, to chase this ray of sunshine and see where it takes him?

It really is a testament to how far he’s come since meeting the group that he can’t find a truly rational way to say no.

 

There’s a lot of assorted furniture scattering the hallway; Jack weaves around it with as much stealth as he can muster. Something in his heart tugs. If he was the kind of person to believe in that sort of thing, he’d probably say it was destiny leading him to where he’s meant to be.

Like fate, he turns a corner right when he comes to the conclusion that it’s okay for him to reach for happiness and sees Bitty standing perfectly still, six feet away from a person wearing all white and with a truly scary-looking weapon ready to fire. Bitty looks like he’s frozen: his eyes are wide and both of his guns are missing from his belt; he must have been surprised and hunted down and cornered. His hair is so blond.

“Bitty,” Jack says quietly, and then he does the most pointlessly heroic thing he’s ever done in his life: he vaults over an upturned desk and throws himself in front of his stunned-still teammate and feels three caps of paint slam into his torso, at the same time as he pulls the tiny gun from his back pocket and unloads all six bullets into the guy standing at the end of the hall. There’s a moment where everything is still, and then the enemy soldier falls to his knees. Jack turns around.

“Bitty,” he says again, barely a whisper, and he reaches out for Bitty’s shocked face and drops his gun and tucks his other hand into the curve of Bitty’s hip and pulls him close and thinks, _here it is_ , and kisses him.

And _kisses_ him.

And Bitty makes a surprised little sound into his mouth and presses right up against Jack’s body and kisses him back and everything feels like it slots right into place.

And then Bitty gets shot in the back by a second soldier because they let their guard down in a (fake, yeah, but still) war zone. Jack frowns at the white-clad figure over the top of Bitty’s head, and says, affronted, “We were trying to have a _moment_.”

“Sorry,” says the shooter meekly. He lets his weapon drop to the floor and scuffs the toe of one combat boot on the linoleum. Jack stares him down until he edges around the corner and out of sight.

“Jack, it’s– it’s fine, um,” stutters Bitty. “I– it was bound to happen sooner or later, and, uhh.” He blinks, like he’s not seeing the world right. “I would have been useless the rest of the game, anyway, thinking ‘bout this.”

Belatedly, Jack says, “Can I kiss you?” and Bitty ducks his head, presses it into Jack’s chest, and laughs breathily.

“Listen to you. _Can you kiss me_ , Lord, like I haven’t been wondering the exact same for months now.” Bitty’s laugh is so beautiful that Jack forgets how to breathe for a moment, and he thinks, _How did I think I could ignore this?_ He’s like the sun. He’s like a whole sky of stars.

Instead of saying any of that, Jack says, “We should go back to the Haus so we can talk properly and change clothes,” and then, “I’m sorry I made you wait so long,” and then, “Shitty is never going to let me hear the end of this.”

“It’s– I– Jack, I don’t mind waiting if it means I get to have _you_ ,” says Bitty, the words spilling out earnest and gasping. “And Shitty can just keep his mouth shut if he wants any of my strawberry cream pie in his future.”

Jack slips his hand into Bitty’s, and smiles, and kisses him one more time for good measure– twice– three times– “Jack, we’re not going to make it to the Haus if you keep making me all weak at the knees like that!”– and they walk across the paint-spattered campus together, and the game rages on around them.

.

The further towards the edge of Greendale property they get, the more infrequent the evidence of skirmishes and fallen paintballers. By the time they reach the Haus, the carnage is just a low interrupted hum in the distance.

Someone spray painted _FUCK OFF SHITHEAD_ on the front lawn, but that’s been there since last week when Shitty TPed the lacrosse hangout across the street.

Seeing the shabby façade of the Haus, which looks exactly as terrible as it did before Jack realised how enormous his feelings had grown untended and unnoticed under Bitty’s unerring sunshine, breaks the silence that the two of them had spent the entire walk home in. “I can’t believe we live here,” Jack says, and Bitty laughs and knocks their shoulders together.

They stand on the grass side-by-side for a long moment, the sun starting to set across Greendale. “The others are probably home already,” says Bitty. “I know Shitty got hit pretty early, and Ransom and Holster went down trying to save each other. Lardo… might still be alive, actually. I wouldn’t be surprised if she won the money.” He shakes his head and laughs. “So. Do you want to tell them?”

The thought of not telling his friends– his team– his _family_ – about this new and familiar warmth in his life had honestly never crossed Jack’s mind. “I trust them,” he says. “Do– do _you_ not want to tell them? Because we don’t have to.”

“Lord, I want to tell _everyone_ ,” Bitty says. “I mean. Okay, what exactly _are_ we telling them?”

Jack blinks. “That we’re dating. Aren’t we?” Did Bitty not get the message?

Bitty laughs, turning his head into Jack’s shoulder and squeezing their interlaced fingers. “You didn’t actually ask me out, Mister Zimmermann. You just kind of– went for it. Not that I’m complaining, not at _all_ , but–”

“Do you want to go out with me?” Jack cuts him off with, and kisses the _yes, lord_ right out of Bitty’s mouth.

The door creaks open when Jack gently shoulders it (it doesn’t lock, but you need to know the right place to push and jiggle the handle, and it’s not like anyone is going to try and rob it anyway) and there’s the whole team sitting in the den in various states of painted. Lardo has one neat mark on her shoulder, but Ransom and Holster are both covered head-to-toe in red and blue, and Shitty looks like he’s been actually dipped into a vat of orange paint, so Jack reasons that he and Bitty got off fairly honourably, all things considered.

“Hey, y’all,” Bitty says tiredly. “I guess none of us managed to stay alive, then?”

“Holy shit!” says Lardo from where she’s upside down on the toxic couch. Jack looks down and realises that he’s still holding Bitty’s hand, absently tracing his pale knuckles with his thumb. Lardo flips upright and elbows a fluorescent Shitty, who in turn goes wide-eyed and throws a pillow at Ransom and Holster. Everyone stares at Jack and Bitty.

“Doth mine eyes deceive me?” gasps Shitty after a beat of silence. “Our darling dearest Eric Richard Bitsy-Boo Bittle, are you holding hands with the pilot of the greatest ass known to mankind?”

“Uh,” says Bitty, blinking rapidly. “Yes?” Jack’s fingers twitch in his, and he clutches their hands tighter together.

“GET IT, BITS!” hollers Holster.

Jack grins. He’s never felt more at home.

.

“Dude, they say nicknames forged in paintball are nicknames for _life_ ,” Ransom says seriously, later, when the chirping has died down and Bitty is making dinner.

“Who’s _they_?” Jack says. “Has anyone on the surface of this earth ever said that?”

“Well, Holster said it earlier, and I said it just now, and that’s enough people for a they.” Ransom pouts a little bit. “C’mon, Jack. Are you just grumpy you didn’t get one?”

“No,” says Jack truthfully. “I mean. If you guys want to be called Ransom and Holster and Lardo and, uh, Bitty, then. Who am I to judge?”

If he’s being honest, Jack has been thinking of them by those names anyway, so it’s not like he actually has any grounds for argument. It’s just– it feels _right_ , somehow, like they’ve finally found their true names after searching and searching. (Should he feel insulted that he didn’t get one? He tries to feel insulted for a moment, but it doesn’t stick.)

It feels right. That’s all it feels like. It feels right and it feels like home and it feels like Jack is finally with the people he’s meant to be with.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

Shitty blinks, an intense focus in his eyes. “It's like… dude, I think some people are just genuinely fucking _destined_ to meet, you know? Like, look at all of us. If things had gone a little differently, we all would have met at Samwell. But, like, fate intervened, and we ended up at Greendale instead? Like… we missed one exit on the highway, but we got a second fucking chance to make a family. A really messy, unrelated, semi-dysfunctional, kinda gay family.” He raises his hands in benediction. “All hail the motherfucking hockey gods.”

It’s the last day of the year, and they all ended up in the study room, because of course they did. It’s been a nice hour or so of reminiscence on the past year, and what led them here, to this point.

“Shrine? Shrine? Shrine?” Ransom says, wide-eyed, pointing around the circle. “Hockey shrine? We can print out a picture of the Stanley Cup and rub it on Jack’s ass so it absorbs some of the latent magic from when he took a shit in it.”

“Do you really think cup magic stays fresh for twenty-four years, Rans?” says Holster, pursing his lips. “It might have, I dunno, expired or something by now.”

“Hey,” says Jack, non-committedly, like he knows he should be upset but doesn't really have a personal investment in the reason why.

“Twenty-four years?” says Ransom, frowning. “I was talking about the 2015 championship win. I swear to god there was rumours that the team was recreating old Cup photos, and everyone hoisted Jack over it and he–”

“HEY,” says Jack, again. He sounds very committed now. Bitty pats his hand placatingly and tries valiantly not to laugh.

“Jackabelle! Level with me here,” Shitty says, leaning forward and ending up in Jack’s lap. “How many times have you taken a dump in the Stanley Cup?”

Jack’s mouth twitches. “I plead the fifth?”

“JACK DROPPED A DEPTH CHARGE IN THE STANLEY CUP LAST YEAR!” hollers Holster at the top of his admirably-sized lungs. A few passing students throw him dirty looks. One girl grins and gives the group a general thumbs-up.

“Oh my god, you guys,” Jack says, hands over his face. “Depth charge, Holster? _Really_?”

“I’ll keep using all my worst shit-synonyms until you nut up and tell us that you laid a sewer pickle of victory in the Stanley cup,” Holster says. Ransom high-fives him without making eye contact.

“I’m an adult,” Jack says. “I’m not talking about this.”

“Did you blast a dookie, Jack?” says Holster sweetly.

“Download a brownload?” Ransom joins in gleefully and with wild abandon.

“Make gravy?”

“Create a custom extrusion?”

“Bust a grumpy?”

“Squeeze out a Cleveland steamer?”

“Chunk a dunk!”

Shitty is in tears; Bitty is pretending not to be. “Where did y’all even– no, I don’t want to ask.”

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Holster grins. “Unless you want to come out with the truth, O launcher of back-pocket rockets?”

“Remember when we studied French?” says Jack wistfully.

“Park a custard!”

“Torque a wicked cable!”

“Final Destination? Nice! Uh, shine a full moon over troubled waters!”

“Grow a tail!”

“Ignite a rectal rocket!”

“Pave the Hershey highway!”

By now, Holster and Ransom are facing each other, the matter of making fun of Jack apparently far behind them. It’s become a collaborative comedy show, like so many of their conversations devolve into.

“Dude, Rans, what’s the best in your arsenal? I’ve got... cut the line for the log flume.”

“Ha,” says Shitty. “ _Arse_ nal.”

“Brah,” Holster says, “I didn’t even notice. That is _hilarious_.”

“I think the top of my list is… release the chocolate hostage,” says Ransom. Holster nods approvingly.

“The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that none of you are ever allowed to rub anything on my ass,” Jack says. Bitty elbows him lightly in the ribs and raises his eyebrows. Ransom and Holster mime twin retches. Jack pauses with his mouth just barely open, and then the realisation hits him. “Oh, I– _shit_ , I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, and turns red in a bright stripe across his cheeks. Shitty’s moustache twitches over a twisting smile; Lardo hides a grin underneath her hand and acts like she isn’t shrieking with laughter.

When the room is finished being amused at Jack’s unintentional entendre (which is to say when they outwardly _appear_ to be finished; they’re all in a constant state of apprehension/appreciation of his verbal blunders, and this one is being firmly committed to the hall of fame) Bitty says, smirking, “Anyway, Cup magic or no, that ass is _absolutely_ an enchanted object,” and Jack goes even redder, and everyone laughs even harder.

It’s easy, is what it is. To sit in the library and joke and chirp each other as naturally as if they’d been doing it for years and years and years. Beneath his flushed face, Jack feels kindling in his throat catch alight, and his fingers don’t feel cold for the first time he can remember.

-:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:--:¦:-

And so it’s the day after the end of the school year, and somehow Jack has survived. Somehow _everyone_ has survived. They haven’t been driven apart by pointless drama, they haven’t suffered a slow death from breathing in the Haus’ potentially toxic air, they haven’t fallen to pieces from their own individual problems– they’ve made each other stronger, if anything.

He’s sitting in the kitchen, fiddling with his new camera (he’s taking a photography class next semester, because he’s always wanted to, and there’s nothing stopping him) and watching Bitty flutter around and bake a pie for the obligatory start-of-summer Haus party they’re throwing. Absently, he reaches out a hand to trace down Bitty’s forearm when he’s within reach, hooking his fingers around his calloused hand. Bitty turns and smiles and lets himself be pulled down into a chaste kiss, raising his eyebrows afterwards.

“And what was that for, mister?” he asks, stepping back and slowly dropping Jack’s hand.

_He’s so–_ so _beautiful_ , Jack thinks.

“Just,” Jack says, and raises his camera to frame Bitty’s flour-streaked face. “Just stay right there.” His voice is quiet but bursting at the seams.

The shutter snaps and Bitty reflexively flinches, just barely, but smiles while he does. Jack looks at him for a moment longer, then flicks his eyes down to the screen of the camera; the shot is ultimately amateurish and badly framed, but the way the sun is coming in through the window, dust and flour motes floating like stars in the solid gold air, the way Bitty’s eyes are focused just to the left of the camera, like Jack has just plucked a moment right out of the fabric of life, the way his shoulders are relaxed and his cheeks are flushed and his shirt is uneven at the bottom and his hair is falling down over one side of his forehead and his face is somehow chiding and loving and everything at once– somehow, it makes it perfect.

He takes a breath.

Jack can see: Bitty’s shy smile as he turns back to the countertop; the tree Shitty got stuck in naked last month gently swaying in the breeze; the Greendale flag-cum-curtains contrasted against the glad-wrap substitute windowpane; glistening knives soaking in the kitchen sink; a pile of green apples stacked uniformly next to Bitty’s workstation.

Jack can hear: someone moving upstairs; the TV on in the den; the intermittent rattle of the second-floor window that needs another layer of duct tape; Shitty either narrating pornography or watching sport in his room.

Jack can feel: the smooth planes of his camera against his fingertips; his shirt hanging light and dry on his shoulders; the edge of the table digging into his hip a tiny bit.

Jack can smell: pie; the mix of vanilla sugar and sweet tea and cinnamon that follows Bitty like a low-hanging cloud.

Jack can taste: tart-sweet granny smith on the tip of his tongue.

Or, more importantly, Jack can see, hear, feel, smell, taste: a home. A family. Reasons to stay.

“Teach me how to properly lattice a pie,” Jack says, and Bitty laughs, and then he does.

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha. hooooo boy. when i started writing this, i expected to maybe hit between 10k-20k, maximum, and yet here we are nearly 50,000 words later??? amazing!!! if i'd managed my time better then this probably would have been even longer, because there's some things i really felt i haven't done justice, and some other things i really would have liked to explore but didn't have the time, but oh well. (the backstory for Professor Dupont... some of Shitty's adventures... _Ransom and Holster facing up against Troy and Abed in the ultimate fight for Best Bros/Boyfriends hhhnnnggh okay you get the idea_ )
> 
> who knows, maybe one day i'll get to a sequel/expanded universe? a second instalment focusing on William Poindexter, student of the Air Conditioner Repair School, and his budding forbidden friendship with Derek Nurse and Chris Chow, who are enrolled in City College and Greendale respectively??? WHO KNOWS??? ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!
> 
> what else? here's a fun game: spot the teeny-tiny McElroyisms/references that snuck in here somehow. there's a few of them scattered around!
> 
> thanks so much for reading, and i hope you enjoyed! comments and kudos are always appreciated. <3


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